Pakistanis try confronting shame of honour killing

KARACHI, May 28: Ayesha Baloch was dragged to a field, her brother-in-law held the 18-year-old down, her husband sat astride her legs and slit her upper lip and nostril with a knife.

They call such assaults on women a matter of ''honour'' in some Pakistani communities, but for the majority it is a source of national shame.

Married less than two months ago in Pakistan's central district of Dera Ghazi Khan, Baloch was accused of having sexual relations with another man before marriage.

''First they tortured me and beat me. I started screaming. Akbar then caught my hands and pulled me to the ground. Essa sat on my legs and cut my nose and lips,'' Baloch mumbled through her bandages at hospital in the city of Multan.

''I was bleeding and started screaming after they fled on a motorcycle. People heard me and rescued me and took me to my mother's home.'' At least she wasn't killed.

More than 1,000 women are slain by their husbands or relatives, and that is just the reported, not actual, number of ''honour killings'' in Pakistan each year.

Many killings are planned rather than done in rage, and the motive often has more to do with money or settling scores.

The same week, a world away from Baloch's village, social activists, parliamentarians and community leaders gathered in the suburban, leafy capital of Islamabad to launch a campaign -- ''We Can End Honour Killing''.

Farhana Faruqi Stocker, country director of international aid agency Oxfam, said some 10,000 people called ''change-makers'' had signed up so far.

But Stocker knows two constituencies will be vital to the campaign's success.

''The mindset of legislators has to be changed in order for good legislation to come out,'' Stocker told Reuters.

But she is well aware that there are many remote rural areas of Pakistan where maulvis, or clerics, exert more influence than local government and federal law.

''In order to bring change, we have to engage with clerics.''

MORE THAN LAWS NEEDED

Pakistan is a country living in many centuries at once.

Its small, Westernised elite embrace the 21st, conservative clerics preach strict interpretations of Islam from the Middle Ages, while many of its poor rural communities are governed by tribal customs going back long before Islam arrived.

Honour killings are known as ''karo-kari'' killings.

A woman is deemed a ''black woman'', a ''kari'', one she is accused of having sex outside of marriage and is liable to be killed. ''Karo'' is the male version.

The custom is rooted in tribalism, although a strict interpretation of Islam's hudood penal code also rules that adulterers should be stoned to death. A former president of Pakistan, Farooq Ahmed Leghari, comes from Dera Ghazi Khan. He says it will take more than laws to change society there, or places like it.

''To fight this menace you need social movements involving people from all segments of society,'' Leghari told Reuters after the launch of the campaign against ''honour killings''.

President Pervez Musharraf champions enlightenment, but critics say he has achieved little due to the influence of tribal chieftains, feudal lords and religious parties in parliament.

A law enacted last year set a minimum 10-year jail sentence for perpetrators of so-called honour killings.

But rights lawyer Rashid Rehman said crimes are more often covered up by families, and police prefer not to get involved.

''Those arrested are often freed for lack of evidence or after reconciling with the victims' families, in most cases close relatives,'' he said.

While police have taken Ayesha Baloch's assailants into custody, along with their father who egged them on, she has low expectations of justice; ''They are powerful people with money, and will get out on bail.''

UPHILL BATTLE

Mukhtaran Mai, an icon for oppressed women and herself the victim of a gang rape in 2002, said police should enforce the law without bias, but getting more girls into school was crucial, too.

''Until women are allowed to get educated ... these crimes will continue,'' said Mai, whose rape was ordered by village elders after her 12-year-old brother was accused of having sexual relations with a woman of another tribe.

Some 70 per cent of Pakistanis live in rural areas where feudalism and tribalism still thrive and traditional codes apply.

Burdened by a population of 160 million growing at well over two percent a year, and with an annual per capita income of 800 dollars, Pakistan is in danger of being swamped by social problems.

Cities are inundated with migrants from rural areas, who bring village ways with them.

Police face an uphill battle even to stop an increase in honour killings, never mind eradicate the crime, according to Fida Hussain Mastoi, assistant inspector-general of police in the southern province of Sindh.

Days earlier, Nur Jehan died in Karachi, a month after being shot four times by relatives who accused her of loose morals.

They tracked her down in the city, having travelled from a village in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, then seized her, shot her and left her for dead in a ditch. She survived for a month in hospital, until a stomach wound became infected.

She was 14.

REUTERS