Pakistani girl wants men who raped her hanged

HABIB LABANO, Pakistan, Feb 3 (Reuters) A 16-year old Pakistani girl who was allegedly raped and forced to walk naked through a village in southern Sindh province wants her attackers to be hanged.

''I have little hope of getting justice. But I want to see those who defiled me hanged,'' the girl (name withheld) told Reuters as she lay on her charpoy, a rope bed at her one-room home in Habib Labano village, 550 km northeast of Karachi.

''I haven't been able to move from my bed out of shame and pain since. I want to see these people pay,'' she said, tugging a frayed brown headscarf to half cover her face.

The men accused of raping the girl were allegedly exacting retribution because one of her relatives had eloped with a woman from their family.

Honour crimes are prevalent in rural and tribal areas where families still enforce age-old feudal customs and forcibly marry, rape, kill and dishonour women in revenge for a perceived slur on their family's honour.

The Governor of the Sindh province has ordered an inquiry into the alleged rape on January 27, and police have arrested six of the 11 people accused. The National Assembly's committee on human rights and law has also ordered an inquiry.

Aftab Farooqi, the investigating officer of the case said the six, including one of the main accused, had been remanded, and the police have been given 14-days to submit a report to the government and conclude investigations..

''We will see justice is done,'' he said.

The father of the victim said he was being harrassed by influential people to drop the case and reach a settlement through the village council (jirga).

''I want justice for my poor girl. If I don't get that I will go to the Supreme Court and set myself on fire,'' the man, a poor labourer, said weeping in the courtyard of his mud-walled one-room home.

The girl's case bears similarities to that of Mukhtaran Mai, an illiterate peasant woman who was gang-raped in Punjab province in 2002 on the orders of a village council. Mai went on to become an icon for womens' rights movements worldwide ecause of her eventually, successful fight for justice.

Her case helped galvanise public opinion behind a government backed change to rape laws, that under the Islamic penal code made it extremely difficult to make rape charges stick, and rendered a victim liable to charges of adultery, an offence that carries a prison sentence.

President Pervez Musharraf, who espouses a vision of ''enlightened moderation'' for his Muslim nation, forced through changes to the rape laws late last year, despite fierce opposition from Islamist parties and religious conservatives.

Reuters KD GC1703