Tribal Justice???

[Ray]

What’s with this krap? I thought this kind of thing went out with the
fall of ancient Babylon. I think these people are very sick...

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Pakistani woman recounts gang-rape ordered by tribal council

By Khalid Tanveer
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 4, 2002

MEERWALA, Pakistan – For two nervous hours, the teen-ager worried for her 11-year-old brother as their father pleaded before a Pakistani tribal council that the boy had done no wrong in walking unchaperoned with a girl from a different tribe.

The council was unconvinced and ordered a brutal punishment: The boy's sister would be gang-raped to shame her whole family.

Shortly afterward, four members of the council took turns raping the 18-year-old sister in a mud hut as hundreds of people stood outside laughing and cheering.

"I touched their feet. I wept. I cried. I said I taught the holy Koran to children in the village, therefore don't punish me for a crime which was not committed by me. But they tore my clothes and raped me one by one," the young woman told The Associated Press yesterday.

As she spoke, her mother Allah Bachai sat beside her at their home in Meerwala village in southern Punjab province, wailing.

Senior police and provincial government officials visited Meerwala yesterday.

Asef Hayyat, Punjab's deputy inspector general of police, said the top officer at the local police station had been suspended and several close relatives of the suspects were detained to pressure the perpetrators into surrendering.

"We will soon arrest the real culprits," Hayyat told reporters.

Pakistan has a tradition of tribal justice in which crimes or affronts to dignity are punished outside the framework of Pakistani law. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has demanded an end to punishments by tribal councils.

The June 22 rape has outraged rights groups, who say the number of atrocities against women in Pakistan is increasing. And Pakistan's Supreme Court yesterday directed top Punjab police and government officials to attend a special hearing tomorrow on the case.

In the rape, the Mastoi tribe demanded punishment after the teen-ager's brother was seen walking unchaperoned with a Mastoi girl in a deserted part of the village. The brother and sister are from the Gujar tribe, which is considered to be lower-class.

The Mastoi tribe called a meeting of the tribal council. The teen-ager's father, Ghulam Farid, 54, said he pleaded for clemency with the council, telling them the Mastoi girl was safe with his son because he was too young to have sex.

"I told the tribal jury that my son is ready to marry (the girl) if they think she had been molested," Farid told AP.

"But Mastoi tribesmen rejected this proposal saying how could they give their daughter to me, a low caste tribal.
"I begged them . . . my daughter is a very pious girl," he said. "I reminded them, 'She has been teaching holy Koran to your children. You are fully aware of her character,' " Farid said.

But the Mastoi girl's father rejected the pleas and demanded the gang-rape as punishment, Farid said. Among the men on the tribal council was Mohammed Ramzan, the Mastoi girl's uncle, he said.

"Nobody supported me. There was no one to protect my daughter," Farid said.
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[The Walker]

... in response to Tribal Justice???, posted by Ray on Jul 5, 2002

Okay guys, let me horn in here.  I am pretty familiar with India and all the "-istans" in the general area.

First, the government does not condone this and has made arrests. They have arrested and are holding family members of fugitives to make them come out from under their rocks.

Under Shariah law this is permissible, as would be the stoning of the young boy. People in the US have no conception of the stratification and prejudices in this part of the world. Class/caste structure there makes our worst redneck/Jim Crow areas look like Berkeley in a liberal mood. The US in the postbellum years and the carpetbagger and KKK era were mild compared to modern day south Asia. Lower caste tribes are that way for eternity. Read the Rudyard Kipling books about India and the British experiences there. Little has changed. Back then India and Pakistan were all one country.

I assume this punishment was meted out because the girl in question was 18 and apparently attractive. These are backwoods tribal areas of the roughest sort. India and Pakistan are peopled mostly by persons to whom witchcraft, demons and other black magic is a real fear. They are incredibly violent places. One woman was sentenced to death recently by stoning (stopped by the government in Karachi) for not defending herself vigorously enough while being raped.

These areas are indeed still in the dark ages except for cars replacing camels and AKs replacing tulwars and daggers and crossbows. Heck, in metro Calcutta a few years ago there was a "monkey man" scare. Where a large ape was seen in some apartments and the rumors got started that a man was able to change himself into a large ape to climb walls and enter homes and steal. There were actually two or three people killed by mobs for being this shapeshifter before it was found out to be a prank. These are backwards and superstitious people in the extreme, especially among the lower castes.

Hard to believe, but true, there are over a billion people in the twenty-first century that are just like this. Heck, if you add Chinese peasants and Indonesian, African and other third world peoples, I imagine two thirds of the population are no better than this. Makes it tough to pick PC allies.

Don

[Ray]

... in response to Re: Tribal Justice???, posted by The Walker on Jul 6, 2002

Hi Don,

I think I agree with Dave’s premise that the Pakistani government does condone a lot of this stuff, if not officially. So they have made arrests? They have arrested and are holding family members of fugitives to make them come out from under their rocks? I wonder if that’s in their official laws? Just arrest the innocent family members to pressure the guilty ones? Sounds a lot like the incident of raping the innocent sister to shame the whole family.

You’re probably right about the reason for “punishing” the sister. I’ll bet a few of those dirty old men had their eye on her for a while and saw this as an opportunity to get their jollies.

I was glad to hear that some Pakistani’s are furious over this incident but I found it interesting that “…hundreds of people stood outside laughing and cheering” during the gang rape.

I guess it’s a good thing that Pakistan is getting more attention in the foreign media recently. Maybe that will have some positive effect in reducing the power and influence of the crazy Muslim clerics in that part of the world. But I kind of doubt it though. Heck, apparently the vast majority of Muslims around the world still aren’t willing to accept the fact that fellow Muslims perpetrated the terrorist attacks on Sept 11th. I don’t know if they are really that stupid or not, but it seems that ANYTHING done in the name of their religion is O.K. with the “majority” of Muslims. Weird…

Ray

[Dave H]

... in response to Re: Tribal Justice???, posted by The Walker on Jul 6, 2002

Hi Don,

I agree with everything you said, except that the Pakistani government doesn't condone these practices. You are right that they didn't this particular time...after it was too late to stop it. I believe that by inaction, they condone these "tribal practices." It seems that another Pakistani woman in the same region, was "punished by rape" the previous week and committed suicide as a result. She didn't seem to get the same "sympathy" by the Pakistani government, perhaps due to lack of international news coverage. I'm sure that President Bush has gotten a lot of heat from various groups over this incident, since it occured in our ally's country. It doesn't help our government's cause when our allies appear before the American public, to be as bad as our enemies. President Bush has probably put pressure on President Musharraf to "do something!" But, it seems that the Pakistani government also has its own laws against women. There are many articles to this affect, here is but one:

The Promises He Made On Women’s Day

By Ayesha Khan

KARACHI, PAKISTAN (PANOS) – In March 2000 Pakistan’s military ruler General Parvez Musharraf boldly announced that his government would review discriminatory anti-woman legislation, the Hudood Ordinances, introduced by his comrade-in-arms, the late dictator Gen. Zia ul-Huq over 20 years ago.

Ten months after Musharraf made his pledge – on International Women’s Day – Pakistani women are still waiting for justice.

Based ostensibly on Islamic Shari’a (legal code of conduct), under Hudood, false allegations of adultery or fornication – zina – are routinely brought against women. In cases of rape, a woman, if unable to prove she has not given her consent to sexual intercourse, may find herself convicted instead. Should she conceive as a result of rape, courts can and do interpret the pregnancy as proof of consent.

An early victim of zina, Safia Bibi, luckily escaped punishment. A blind 18-year-old in 1983, she was raped and made pregnant. Although she pressed charges against her attacker, the court sentenced her to three years in jail and 15 lashes for having sex outside marriage.

The judge said the sentence was light, because she was young and disabled.

Pakistan’s nascent women’s movement – spurred into action by Gen. Zia’s discriminatory legislation – agitated for justice. Fortunately, domestic and international protest secured Bibi’s acquittal on appeal.

After the 1979 introduction of Hudood, cases of reported adultery jumped from a handful to thousands.

In 1980, 70 women were in prison; by 1988 over 6,000 women were accused of Hudood crimes and jailed, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP). Courts habitually fail to offer bail, parole or probation to women. Figures collected by the HRCP in 1998 from 20 jails in the state of Punjab found that of nearly 1,000 women prisoners, almost 90 per cent spent months awaiting trial, vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their jailers. More than a third of the women did not have a lawyer.

After nearly two decades of Hudood – which also applies to non-Muslims – it is now rare for a man to be convicted of rape. Since 1979 “eye-witness evidence is primary, and forensic evidence is only accepted as corroborative or circumstantial,” says attorney Hina Jilani.

The 1984 Laws of Evidence exclude women’s testimony altogether in hadd (maximum) punishments which call for death sentences by flogging or stoning, and halve the value of their evidence in lesser punishments and in civil matters. Non-Muslims are not allowed to give evidence, in direct contravention of the 1973 Pakistan Constitution, which guarantees equality to all citizens regardless of caste, creed or sex.

That did not stop Gen. Musharraf from waxing eloquent on International Women’s Day. For good measure, he also pledged that police and courts would be compelled to investigate and prosecute cases of so-called “honour killings” of women.

According to the HRCP such killings in 1999 claimed the lives of over 1,000 women, deemed by husbands or families to have blackened family honour by deviating from social norms or tribal law.

Such ‘deviations’ include seeking divorce from abusive husbands, or wishing to choose their own marriage partner. Their murderers are rarely brought to justice.

In 1999 Samia Sarwar, an abused mother-of-two seeking divorce from a drug-addicted husband, was executed in her lawyer’s office by a gunman hired by her own family. Her attorney, Hina Jilani, narrowly escaped death in the attack. Despite witness identification of the assailant, no arrests have been made - an outrage that has led to protests and demonstrations for justice in cities across the country.

Human rights campaigners believe that as many as half of all women imprisoned in Pakistan are falsely charged with the crime of zina. Husbands use it to intimidate wives, parents to prevent daughters from choosing their own spouses, police to blackmail women and feudal landlords to browbeat their tenants.

Samina, married with seven children, endured severe beatings. When she filed for divorce her husband hurled acid at her, forcing her to flee to a shelter. In retaliation, he lodged a false case of zina against her and another man alleging they had run away together. With legal help Samina secured bail and the case was dropped. Her divorce has been granted but she lives in fear. “He’s still lurking in my neighbourhood. I’m scared for my life,” she says.

Despite the huge numbers of women accused and held in jail awaiting trial under zina, few are actually tried and convicted. At the same time, the few cases that make it to appeal usually end in acquittal – it is proof, say human rights activists, that the law is exploited to control women.

Defenders of Hudood disagree. Justice Tanzil-ur-Rahman, former chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology and a member of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, says the only problem is some rotten apples in the judicial barrel.

“I agree, it has been zulm [cruelty, oppression] for women. These judges are corrupt, inefficient. They don’t believe in humanity let alone Islam.” Like other supporters of the controversial laws, Rahman believes that the solution is to ‘Islamise’ all laws, removing any clash between Islamic law and the existing civil statute books.

But removing the Hudood Ordinances is a political hot potato. Twice-elected female Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto promised but failed to deal with the anti-women legislation, unwilling to antagonise religious leaders.

So far, Gen. Musharraf has ignored the demands of women’s and other groups that the ordinances be repealed. Instead, he says, he will introduce a package of legal reforms for women and include the issue of Hudood in other legislative changes.

Following his Women’s Day pledge, Musharraf did set up a permanent commission on the status of women – a longstanding demand of women’s activists. However, the scope and powers of this body have yet to be announced.

Campaigners charge that no government in Pakistan has been willing to confront the religious establishment and right-wing political parties and challenge Zia’s anti-women legislation.

Says Zohra Yousuf, HRCP secretary general, “Political bigwigs have this fear of being considered un-Islamic, because fundamentalist Islamic factions are well organised and have the power to create trouble.” 1,020 words

[The Walker]

... in response to Tribal Justice or Pakistani Law..., posted by Dave H on Jul 6, 2002

Actually, the government in Pakistan has been cracking down on tribal courts for some time now, not just recently. Do they do a good job of it? They try. They crack down whenever the tribal court gets too far offline and it is in an area where they can. Remember, their central government does not have the power ours does. In many regions of the subcontinent there is no law except tribal law. The government cannot go traipsing around willy-nilly unless there is an outrageous violation or a series of serious violations. Some of these areas are still controlled by Taliban sympathyzers and the government has to show up in force to get anything done.

Also women tend to cry rape over there when it has not happened. Even moreso than in the US. Accusing a man of rape can result in the death sentence. They, and their tribal and/or family elders make use of this fact to try and blackmail other tribes or families. Happens every day, several times a day. So calls of rape are treated with suspicion and the people have brought that on themselves, crying wolf. The sad thing is that rape does indeed happen more often there.  A woman may not report a rape for fear she would be accused of not resisting enough, or of being forever shunned by potential husbands if she is not married. Men rape because they have literally no other sexual outlet unless married, and because they can get away with it.

This woman said people cheered outside, but it was the people of the offended tribe that cheered. I doubt many of her tribe cheered, and the news that one of her own uncles was on the court that ordered the rape is disheartening.

In many cultures women count for little. Many Islamic men do not bother to learn the names of their daughters, depending on the sort of Islam they practice. This also happens in Africa, regardless of religion, where insistence on "dry" sex is running up the AIDS rate to incredible numbers. Women have few rights outside the first world. Pakistan had a female PM not long ago and the Philippines have had more than one female president, and although the Philippines are far better than Pakistan in treatment of women, they are still no great shakes compared to the US or Western Europe or Russia.

So we have to make do with what we have. Failure to deal with the devil is what got us into 9/11 in the first place. To get inside information from very nad people you have tp be prtepared to pay other very bad people money and turn the other cheek towards them when they do some bad things. In many organizations it is a long history of crime or else the supervised murder of an innocent that gets you in the door. Our governments will not condone that so the bad guys have an advantage. We don't have to like dealing with bad people, but it is the lesser of several evils.

Don

[Dave H]

... in response to Tribal Justice or Pakistani Law..., posted by Dave H on Jul 6, 2002

In the above post, I didn't mean to imply that "our government's cause" in our War On Terror was in any way in conflict with what is best for the American people. It is not always possible or helpful to only have allies (or informants) that have a similar set of values as we do. It is often a matter of the lesser of two evils.

Governments do not take lightly the power of the news media to sway public opinion. Examples in the US include W.W.II in a positive manner and the Vietnam War in the negative, contributing to different outcomes.

Dave H.

[Jeff S]

... in response to P.S., posted by Dave H on Jul 6, 2002

The reason WWII was won and Viet Nam considered a loss had little to do with how the media portrayed the war. Had Viet Nam been run like Desert Storm or WWII by generals in the field with only one objective - to win as quickly as possible with the least loss of life, the outcome would have been vastly different. By thinking a "limited war" was possible with bombing targets selected from Washington, avoiding known military strongholds, ground taken then given back, and no directive to take and hold territory, the war ground on year after year with no end in sight - only then did the media turn against the war taking most of the public with it. Remember by the tet offensive in 1968, when the tide of public opinion really turned, the US had already been fighting in Viet Nam longer than in all of the US involvement in WWII, five years - and that involved the taking of almost the entirety of North Africa, all of the Pacific from Hawaii to Japan, plus much of Western  Europe, yet after five years in Viet Nam, people were still taking hills, losing men, giving them back, retaking them, losing more men, giving them back, over and over again, and were still stalled in a land area not much bigger than Delaware. No one ever ordered the military to win. At least thats the way I saw it. I suspect many don't share my opinion.

-- Jeff S.

[Dave H]

... in response to Well I have to discgree on that one..., posted by Jeff S on Jul 7, 2002

Hi Jeff,

I agree with much of what you say. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of many brave soldiers who were used as cannon fodder, Vietnam was a clusterphuck. In my post above, the key word was the media's influence in "contributing" to the outcome. I do not in any way consider it the only factor. During W.W.II Americans constantly saw newsreels and posters of American and Allied heroes fighting the war and winning battle after battle. They heard names like Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur, Jimmy Doolittle, and Audie Murphy. Most couldn't wait to enlist into the military and get in the war. Americans at home were also solidly behind the war effort. While some 20+ years later, in the 60's, Americans watched the Vietnam War every night in our living rooms. The media portrayal of the war was much different than during W.W.I or W.W.II. While eating dinner, we saw up close footage of American causalities being drug through the mud, bodies piled up, and flag draped coffins being unloaded from military cargo planes. I can't recall much glorification from the media, especially after the tet offensive. Instead of jumping at the chance to enlist, many young Americans dreaded the date they would graduate from high school and soon drafted into military service. Some fled the country into Canada. Americans at home were not solidly behind the war effort. Soldiers returned home only to be called cruel names and rejected. Vietnam became a very unpopular war among most Americans, which ultimately doomed it to failure. Presidents and elected officials are politicians that make most decisions based on public opinion, which is influenced more and more every day by the media.

Desert Storm...I don't think that one is over yet!

Dave H.

[Jeff S]

... in response to No problem..., posted by Dave H on Jul 7, 2002

That's so true, the glorification of it all in earlier years. The movie "Green Berets" came out when I was just getting started in high school. Many of my 14 year old friends couldn't wait to turn 18 so they could go off to way and fight with John Wayne. I suspect that by 1970 when they were 18, the reality of it all settled in and it turned into, as you said, bodies being dragged out through the mud, not John Wayne swaggering back into base camp, mission accomplished.

-- Jeff S.

[Jeff S]

... in response to Well I have to discgree on that one..., posted by Jeff S on Jul 7, 2002

Though I do agree that international press attention on this gang rape issue will do far more in a short time than all the official Pakistani government condemnations of tribal law practices ever uttered.

-- Jeff S.

[Dave H]

... in response to PS..., posted by Jeff S on Jul 7, 2002

N/T

[Eman]

... in response to Tribal Justice???, posted by Ray on Jul 5, 2002


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Police in Pakistan are continuing to hunt for three men wanted for carrying out the gang rape of an 18-year-old girl on the orders of a tribal council.

One of the four men accused of carrying out the rape was arrested Friday by police in Baluchistan province, several hundred kilometers from the village of Meerwala in Punjab province where the rape took place.

However, three others remain on the run with police saying they believe the suspects have fled far from the village.

The case, which has made headlines around the world, has outraged much of Pakistan and thrown the spotlight on the country's tribal courts.    

[Tim]

... in response to Tribal Justice???, posted by Ray on Jul 5, 2002

This episode reminded me of what Maximus (Russell Crowe) said to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in "Gladiator"-

"I have seen much of the world, and it is dark."

Regards, Tim

[Dave H]

... in response to Tribal Justice???, posted by Ray on Jul 5, 2002

Hi Ray,

If the eyes of the world weren't upon them, I'm certain that this would have been considered just another normal day in Pakistan.

Dave H.

[Jimbo]

... in response to Babylon Reborn!, posted by Dave H on Jul 5, 2002

Hi Dave,

War makes for strange bedfellows, that's for sure.  It ain't easy being allied with these barbarians.

Jim