Women under attack
The writer is a freelancer based in Kandhkot, Sindh. He can be reached at alihassanb.34@gmail.com
From the gruesome killing of Noor Mukadam to the torture-murder of Memoona, patriarchy appears to be tightening its claws of toxic misogyny in our society with each passing day. Decades of horrified misogynistic and patriarchal practices haunting women with blood-thirsty claws have failed to awaken the conscious of our society. Of all brutalities facing women in Pakistan in general and Sindh province in particular, most go unreported — hence no punishment to the perpetrators.
The violence against women has been assuming the form of a socially established norm rather than a crime. Upper Sindh, where tribal and feudal influence reigns supreme instead of the law of the land, is a fertile ground for preying on innocent women. Hundreds of thousands of women face violence and in many cases meet death without any justice being served to the victim and her family. The tribal and feudal influence is so strong that the merciless murders end up in tribal settlement through jirga in sheer negation of the law of the land. Laws do exist, like Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection Act), 2013, but they are hardly implemented in their earnest. Resultantly, culprits in most instances go scot free and the vicious cycle of systematic torture and violence against women continues unhindered.
The systematic violence against women has its very roots in the patriarchy tendencies prevalent in rural Sindh. Women are hardly deemed human and treated like personal properties. They are tortured, murdered, sexually abused, honour-killed, and handed over to an aggrieved party to settle personal animosity, financial feuds and matrimonial disputes. The growing intensity and frequency of violence is but a glaring manifestation of the authority’s apathy towards the protection of life, sanctity and dignity of women.
What is even more concerning is that in most of the rural parts of Sindh, violence against women is deemed a ‘personal and family matter’ and is hardly attended to by the police and other state institutions. Even if a case gets reported, the officials concerned press for an informal resolution of the dispute rather than taking the case to the court of law. The few cases that somehow land in the courts do not reach their legal conclusion. These constraints compel women to keep languishing in the subjugated domestic milieu, and encourage patriarchal tendencies.
In rural Sindh, many factors contribute to the prevalent misogynistic attitude and subsequent plight of women. First and foremost is illiteracy. Since the northern areas of Sindh, mainly the ones bordering Balochistan, have the lowest literacy rate in the country, not too many are aware of their human rights let alone the women’s rights. Women are generally considered as subhuman creatures and treated as such. There is hardly any place for respect, dignity and sanctity when it comes to treating women.
Feudal mindset and tribal influence is another reason behind the growing violence against women in rural Sindh. Since feudal clutches have a tight hold on these regions, they are the biggest hurdles as regards the implementation of laws to penalise violence against women. A tribal comprise is thus the preferred method for the resolution of disputes whereby it is almost always the woman who stands victimised. Let alone the sanctity and dignity, even the life of a woman is sacrificed in some cases.
Given the irritants mentioned above, one believes there is need for setting up women-only courts in the country to serve justice to female victims of male chauvinism.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 30th, 2021.
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