a woman must certainly never be raped — or married forcibly, tied to a tree and stripped naked — if she, let alone anyone else in her family, marries out of choice. PHOTO: FILE.
Let it be as straightforward as this: a woman must never be raped, regardless of what felonies her male relatives, or she herself, commits. Moreover, a woman must certainly never be raped — or married forcibly, tied to a tree and stripped naked — if she, let alone anyone else in her family, marries out of choice. Soon after a 40-year-old widow was gang-raped on jirga orders in Muzaffargarh, the chilling plight of a 22-year-old girl in Chiniot — who was declared “vani” by the local jirga after her brother eloped with a village girl — came to the fore, bringing with it an unnerving sense of deja vu, suggesting a continuity in the perpetration of monstrosities against rural women. Needless to say, these indictments flash a glaring spotlight over the fact that contempt for a woman’s body, for her femininity, have been not just hardwired in the minds of people, but also institutionalised via a parallel judicial system.
The extreme anti-female rulings of tribal jirgas are an issue which has been raised multiple times on these pages. However, rulings should also be seen as one begotten via an antithetical judicial system which, by penalising acts outside the ambit of the Constitution, challenges the very writ of the state. It will be impossible to address jirga-led ruling, in isolation as jirgas across the length and breadth of the country are different in nature and structure. Atrocities of the like are only addressable by negating the very existence of a parallel judicial system and by insisting on uniform statutes of law — otherwise known as the Constitution of Pakistan — which should be binding on every inch of geography of this land without compromise.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 24th, 2014.
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Even the courts in Pakistan, including the Supreme Court, are no better than the tribal jirgas. Iftekar Chaudhry conducted the court shamefully. How different are these Jirga verditcs from Intekar Chaudhry's verdict ordering continued rape of Rinkle and preventing her family from meeting her? The Parliamentarians and Members of Assembly did nothing then. They have done nothing since then and still continue to look the other way. Media and muslims cheered and celebrated. Pakistan is a country full of believers but there are no followers. Everyone will preach virtues of Islam but no one practices it. Everyone wants Sharia to be imposed on others but not on self. Nothing is going to get better and it will only get worse. As long as muslims keep supporting or remaining silent when hindu girls are raped and converted, they cannot prevent it coming on to themselves. These types of acts will spread from tribal society to urban townships.