A cruel act

Around 500 women are killed every year in Pakistan for perceived damage to family honour. A joint session of both Houses of parliament adopted a bill on Oct 16, 2016 mandating life imprisonment for perpetrators of such crimes, even if the victim’s family pardons the perpetrators. The legislation followed a series of “honour killings,” including the strangling of social media celebrity Qandeel Baloch by her brother. But so far what we have seen there is no noticeable decrease in the number of “honour killings” in the country, and this shows there is something amiss in the implementation of the relevant law, as is the case with most laws.

Recently, a young girl and her fiancé were killed for taking a picture together in Karachi’s Qasba Colony. First, the girl’s father killed the man and later forced his daughter to swallow poison at gunpoint.

On Dec 3, a police official of Kolai-Palas revealed that two of the five women believed to have been killed in the 2012 Kohistan honour-killing incident are reportedly alive. The DPO said the four accused arrested by the police last week had not only confessed to the killings but also disclosed that two of the five women believed to have been killed are alive.

Over the past two decades, there has been a sharp rise in honour killing in Pakistan and it is likely to increase considering the gender-segregated patriarchal society on the one hand and the fast societal changes that are taking place. Now more and more women are getting an education and interacting with men at their workplaces. What is needed is a change in the mindset of people which is a gradual process. As the changes will take time to consolidate, it becomes the government’s responsibility to take deterrent action to prevent the spate of “honour killings.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 5^th, 2018.

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