No second chances

Murder is already a crime. Honour killings are no exception

Looking at the details emerging about the murder of Samia Shahid, a Bradford resident who had a second marriage against her family’s will, is like being in a repetitive nightmare. It seems so familiarly eerie and without escape. The Punjab police, led by a watchful committee summoned by the chief minister, now say her death in Pandori was not a natural one like they first said it was. They say Samia was asphyxiated and the bruise on her neck shows signs of strangulation. Naz Shah, a Bradford West MP, who is personally pursuing the case and has written to the prime minister about it, wants Samia’s body, which had a swift burial, exhumed and the matter investigated fully. What will be discovered after the autopsy is something everyone knows. The cast of characters also seems familiar: her family who are suspected to have killed her, her first husband, and her second husband who has also got death threats. Like I said, this is familiar and inescapable. Everything points to this being an honour killing.

The state is interested in making sure it doesn’t embarrass itself with such high-profile cases. What it does is soft-peddle around the famous cases, such as this one, then go back to being complacent about the small fish. The reason these murders keep happening is because the state fails at using force when needed. There is no muscle flexed to whip the wrongdoers into line so no one ever tries to commit such crimes again. The problem is that the state doesn’t follow the doctrine of giving no second chances. In a Pakistan where no second chances are allowed, male lawmakers would not refer to their female lawmakers in a sexist manner and then continue to sit in parliament. In such a Pakistan, the mob that burnt to death a young teacher in Muree for rejecting a suitor would not be at large. In such a Pakistan over 1,000 honour killings would not be reported on average every year. We shudder to think of the unreported numbers.

In a society where all freedoms, authorities and laws make men comfortable, any time women define their will, it is considered an aggression, however minuscule. The reactionary murders of women, burnings or cuts and scrapes are then easily rationalised. This is a country that celebrates the valour of the brother who killed social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch. This is a country where educated young graduates celebrated the father who attempted to murder his daughter in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s film, A Girl in the River. How can we go from crowning murderers to empowering women without the state giving all offenders a clear message that wrongs committed against women are wrongs committed against the state? We don’t. Instead, the onus is said to rest on women. Why don’t they change their state? Let’s just say that women are petrified. Not much transformation happens when self-preservation is a constant state of mind. The bolder women are eaten up, devoured by the hyenas this state protects. So we hide in corners, speak in monosyllables and look the other way when men oppress other women in our families, in our workplaces and in our parliament. Sometimes we even join them in the oppression.

In the last few weeks, Pakistanis have been rejoicing over the fact that a mocha-skinned native of this country who adopted America as his home showed Donald Trump some daylight stars. Khizr Khan, whose Pakistani-American son served in the US Army, waved a pocket-sized US Constitution at Trump and asked him to read it. We need a Pakistani Khizr Khan to wave the Pakistani Constitution at its premier. There are guarantees of equality in Articles 25, 26 and 27. There are promises of no discrimination based on gender. Let’s face it. If a Khizr Khan were to wave such a pocket edition of the Pakistani Constitution, he’d be booed, ostracised and worse, ignored.

The only way for people to snap out of the recurrent nightmare of honour killings is for the state to behave as it is expected to, under the contract it has with its citizens — give no second chances to murderers — where killings are treated as killings. There is a need to sever the invisible but strong tie of women’s right to be individuals from the need for men to determine some shifty social status. 

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2016.

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