Story of rape serves timely reminder to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Nov 14: The story of an illiterate Pakistani village woman's fight to convict the men who raped her went on sale this month, as the country's parliament braced for a debate over reforming Islamic laws governing the crime.

Mukhtaran Mai became an icon for women's rights group worldwide because of her fight for justice in a male-dominated society, where the laws were stacked against her.

Outrage over her treatment gave momentum to efforts by progressive reformers in their long struggle against religious conservatives to make Pakistan a more moderate country.

Mai's ghost-written account ''In the Name of Honour'' tells how, in 2002, a village council ruled that the men of a powerful clan should gang-rape her in retribution for her 12-year-old brother's alleged sexual relations with one of their womenfolk.

Mai says her brother was also sodomised.

The barbaric punishment stems from tribal customs that pre-date Islam, and are perpetuated by feudalism.

Under Pakistan's parallel Islamic legal code, introduced in 1979 and known as the Hudood Ordinances, a rape victim is required to produce four male witnesses to prove she was raped, or face being jailed for having extra-marital sex.

''Unfortunately, the only eyewitnesses to both my brother's rape and mine are the criminals themselves,'' Mai says in her book, though almost the entire village of Meerwala, in Punjab province, was aware of what had happened, after she was shoved half-naked from the stable where she was assaulted by four men.

Later, sitting in a police station to lodge accusations, Mai speaks of a moment of self-realisation.

''I don't count for more than a goat here, even if I haven't got a cord looped round my neck,'' she says, recalling the start of her long journey to becoming an activist seeking justice for victims of rape, acid attacks and other abuses.

Mai, who is due to leave for New York today for the launch of her book, is still chasing justice for herself. Embarrassed by the furore raised by media coverage of her ordeal, the government allowed the first trial to be conducted in an anti-terrorism court rather than an Islamic sharia court. Six men involved in Mai's case were sentenced to death for rape or incitement, but five of them were freed by the Lahore High Court last year. Mai is now awaiting the Supreme Court's definitive ruling.

GOVERNMENT DITHERS

This week, the National Assembly is expected to re-open a debate over a Women's Protection Bill, that would put rape solely under the ambit of the civil penal code and allow convictions to be made on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence.

But fears linger that the government could duck the issue, even though support from the progressive opposition Pakistan People's Party would give it an easy majority, despite opposition from Islamist parties and conservatives among its own ranks.

''It is time for the government to stop dithering and honour its word,'' Ali Dayan Hasan, a Human Rights Watch researcher, said in a statement.

In September, the National Assembly adjourned after reaching an impasse over the bill, and the law minister said it would be taken up and presented unchanged in the next session.

The reform has President Pervez Musharraf's backing.

While Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup seven years ago, sees himself as a champion of the emancipation of women, progressives see him as a general with feet of clay.

''So far, he has been all talk and no action,'' said HRW's Hasan.

Reuters