Pakistani women formed a council of their own to prevent more girl
killings
It was a brutal killing: A dozen leaders of a remote Pakistani
village grabbed a teenage girl from her home, bound her and set her on fire in
a van.
Her crime? Helping a
couple to elope. Her judge and jury? A village council known as a jirga.
In Pakistan and
neighboring Afghanistan, jirgas are common in rural areas like Abbottabad,
where Ambreen Riasat was found charred in May. Acting as the local council and
court, these bodies’ word is law, and they have been completely composed of
men.
But not anymore.
In the green hills of
the Swat Valley, another remote northern Pakistan district, local resident
Tabassum Adnan turned traditional Pakistani gender roles on their head by
forming the first female jirga in the region. It’s the same area where the
Taliban once held absolute sway and, in 2012, shot teenage activist Malala
Yousafzai in the head for being insistent on girls going to school.
Adnan, 39, says
she set up Khwendo Jirga, or "sisters’ council," in
2013 after witnessing the failure of the system to protect a local woman.
“A young girl was
attacked with acid,” Adnan recalled, referring to a common assault on
women, often in apparent revenge for resisting a man’s advances.
“When her case was presented to a male jirga, they promised their full support,
but they didn’t help at all.”
And cases like Riasat’s
are exactly what her 25-member women’s jirga wants to prevent.
“Though killings in the
name of honor have become a commonplace in our society, Riasat’s death was especially barbarous,”
Adnan added. “The government and the law enforcement agencies have failed.”
In fact, Pakistani
courts have been outlawing jirgas and declaring their judgments illegal since
2004 — and the country’s Supreme Court in 2012 declared jirgas illegal and
unconstitutional. But the rulings have not been effective in tribal parts of
the country, and the government has refused to outlaw them outright.
Instead, in rural areas
of Pakistan and Afghanistan — out of reach for official law enforcement — these
all-male councils remain the authority for settling local disputes. That often
means ordering gang rapes or “honor” killings to appease a party claiming to be
seriously wronged, or marrying off female children of debtors, a traditional
practice called vani.
Tahira Abdullah, a
member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a nonprofit group, says that
the government has to step in to put an end to the unofficial councils and
their death sentences.
“Until jirgas are
abolished by law, Pakistan will not see an end to honor killings and other
barbaric violent crimes against women,” Abdullah said. “No matter how many
gender-based violence laws are enacted.”
Adnan does not have as
much faith in the government either. From her experience working with
officials, she finds them biased against female victims and unable to ensure
their safety.
“The existing laws on
the protection of women are weak,” Adnan said. “But the issue is not that we
need new laws — even the existing laws are not implemented properly.”
This week, an
influential group of 40 Pakistani religious leaders called the Sunni Ittehad
Council issued an edict against revenge killings that aim to restore a family’s
honor. Such killings constitute an “unlawful, unconstitutional, undemocratic,
unethical and unjustifiable act that must be stopped by the state at any cost,”
the council’s Punjab general secretary, Mufti Saeed Rizvi, told
the Agence France-Presse.
Still, the horrific
sentences will continue, analysts say, in order to keep rural villagers in
line.
Abdullah Khan, managing
director at the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, lives a
few hundred yards from where Riasat was killed. He says the murder was the way
for the local jirga to frighten the community into sticking to traditions.
“The local clan of
Sadyal sat together at midnight and decided to teach an unprecedented lesson to
those who played a role in love marriages,” Khan said. “Some of them went to
Ambreen’s house and told her mother to send Ambreen with them or they would
kill the rest of the family.”
Meanwhile, by creating a
female jirga in an ex-Taliban stronghold, Adnan knows that she is challenging
tradition and putting herself in jeopardy: Some local men think the idea is
merely crazy while others are contemptuous of it, she says.
“I challenged the set
norms of the society, which has put my life in danger, but I always thought
that was the right thing to do,” Adnan said.
“Those who raise their
voices against injustice are labeled ‘agents’ in our society,” she added.
According to Adnan,
nearly 1,000 girls and women have sought help from the sisters’
council over the years. One of them was Tahira, a girl from Swat, an acid
attack victim who later died from her injuries but the jirga made sure her
case was highlighted in the media and properly documented.
Another case involved a
13-year-old girl being forced into marriage. Adnan rushed to the venue to stop
it from happening and filled out a police report. The girl is now resuming
her education.
Part of the reason Adnan
is so passionate about defending women in Pakistan, is because she was a child
bride herself. Married off at 14 to a man two decades her senior, she divorced
him after 20 years of abuse. That shocked her family and local society: Divorce
goes against local traditions.
Still, she says, “In the
end, I stood up for myself and stopped being miserable.”
Even though she bucked
tradition, she says she supports the jirga system in general, just modified to
reflect women’s voices.
“I don’t agree with
those who say that the jirga system should be dismantled because that’s not
practical, people need a structure to solve their issues,” she said. “We need
to reform the jirgas and if the government supports initiatives like the
women’s jirga then more women will be encouraged [to participate].”
Naila Inayat reported
from Swat Valley, Pakistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment