Tribal elders from Azadkhel tribe of Kohistan have voiced intentions to sue Dr Farzana Bari and Afzal Kohistani for allegedly maligning the tribe through a baseless video scandal.
Speaking to the media at a news conference on Friday, tribal elders said human rights activist Dr Farzana Bari and Afzal Kohistani, brother of the boys filmed in the video, had disrespected Kohistani traditions by claiming the women in the video had been murdered by the tribe.
“They have used malicious propaganda to garner more money and attention from international NGOs,” alleged Maulvi Javed, an elder. “The activists have degraded and disrespected the entire Kohistani society.”
In 2012, four women of the Azadkhel tribe were filmed singing and clapping with two boys from the Salekhel tribe. When the video was leaked to the Azadkhel tribe, a jirga comprising 12 elders reportedly condemned the four women and another minor girl along with the two boys to death.
Later, it was reported that the four women and the minor girl were killed on May 30, 2012 in accordance with the jirga’s decree.
However, according to Javed, the women are very much alive and living a normal life in Kohistan. He said a fact-finding mission sent by the Supreme Court has already endorsed this claim and the women were produced in front of the female members of the mission. The apex court disposed of the case after the fact-finding mission’s report was released, he added.
However, Dr Farzana Bari and Afzal Kohistani then filed a petition in Kohistan’s district court to reopen the case. Javed condemned the activists for having “ill designs” and giving a bad name for the tribe.
According to another elder, Molvi Noorul Haq, there was no justification to file a petition after the apex court had already disposed of the case.
Both tribal elders insisted Bari and Kohistani have defamed girls of the tribe and pledged to take legal action and claim damages from them.
Stay order
On Thursday, a division bench of Peshawar High Court stayed further hearings by the sessions court in the case until the writ petition is disposed of.
In February, district and sessions Judge Sardar Muhammad Irshad had asked the district police officer (DPO) to produce the five girls in court if they were alive or to exhume their bodies and present them in court if they had been murdered. When the hearing began, Kohistan police produced a written statement of the parents of all five girls which said they were alive and living in Achar.
Sarfraz, who is the father of one of the women filmed in the video, had filed a joint writ petition with the High Court’s Abbottabad bench in March to bar the sessions court from summoning the women saying it was against Kohistani tribal traditions.
However, National Commission on Status of Women (NCSW)’s counsel Mazhar Akram Awan had termed the Supreme Court’s fact-finding mission report ‘mala fide’ and insisted the girls were murdered in the name of honour. He also accused the parents of producing three similar-looking girls before the mission rather than those who were allegedly murdered.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 18th, 2014.
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