Posted on 09/27/2002 8:05:29 AM PDT by robowombat
'I was sold to a man ... is this Islam?'
Pakistan's military ruler has failed to combat the murder of women who resist forced marriages
Special report: Pakistan
Rory McCarthy in Lahore Monday January 29, 2001 The Guardian
Shehnaz Akhtar did not want to marry her cousin. But a woman of 25 from a poor family living deep in the Punjabi farmlands of Pakistan is rarely allowed to choose her husband. This month her parents decided she must marry Tajammul, a relative she knew but did not like, who was willing to pay 20,000 rupees (£250) for their daughter. Shehnaz was forced to sign the marriage certificate, but in secret she wrote a letter begging the high court in Lahore for help.
"In the days before Islam girls were buried alive, now they are sold like sheep and goats," she wrote. "I have been sold to a man I never wanted to live with. What kind of Islam is this?
"I am a very unlucky woman who has been thrown to the wolves. My marriage was cruel and arbitrary."
Exceptionally, Judge Khawaja Sharif agreed, and last week he ordered armed police to take Shehnaz from her family home to a refuge for women. "Marriage cannot be imposed on an adult woman against her free will," he said.
In much of Pakistan, marriage clearly is imposed on women against their will. Those brave enough to complain to the courts or run from their homes are hunted down by their families and forced to return or, all too frequently, murdered to restore a distorted sense of honour. The police usually turn a blind eye.
Honour killings
General Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who seized power 15 months ago, promised to end to these "honour killings." Yet in the past year the number reported in the Punjab alone jumped from 432 to more than 500.
"Women are treated as property and there is a perception that honour stems from the woman in the household," said Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
"Gen Musharraf may genuinely believe this shouldn't happen, but he has shown no clear will to stop it. He needs to change tradition, and tradition is one of the hardest things to change."
Shehnaz is apart from her husband now, but her new life is far from ideal and she remains in considerable danger.
The judge sent her to Dar-ul Aman, a privately owned, rundown refuge in Lahore where 75 women live behind locked, steel gates, unable to leave the compound and in constant fear of their families' vengeance. Shehnaz is not allowed visitors, apart from her lawyer, and she and the other women seem to be mainly confined to their rooms. Husbands, fathers and male cousins gather menacingly by the gate.
"The inmates don't like to leave this institution, because their lives are in danger," said Zubaida Khatoon, who supervises the shelter. "If they leave people may murder them."
Some human rights workers are very concerned about this and seven government-run shelters in Punjab. "They call it a shelter, but it is actually like a prison," Ms Hyat said. More than 700 women have passed through the grey metal gates of Dar-ul Aman in the past year.
Despite some previous court rulings similar to the one in Shehnaz's case, support for women who escape brutal marriages is still limited.
Another victim, Tahira Bibi, believes she can live in safety only if she leaves the country. After her first husband died 15 years ago her parents forced her into three engagements. Each time the selected groom paid her family, once with land and twice with 15,000 rupees (£190) in cash, before her parents broke the engagement off.
Then, at the age of 35, Tahira Bibi fell in love with a school tutor, and married him, against her parents' wishes. "My brother and my cousin kidnapped me and tortured me for two months. They hit me with a stick. Then they forced my husband to sign divorce papers," she said.
Now she lives with 34 women in Dastak, a shelter set up in a secret location in Lahore by Pakistan's most prominent sisters, the human rights workers Hina Jilani and Asma Jehangir.
Beatings
Many of the women need medical care and psychological counselling, but they are free to leave the house by day to work or shop for their children, if they wish.
One woman, Razia, was forced into a marriage when she was 13 and regularly beaten and locked in a room by her husband. "He said if I told anyone he would kill me," she said.
After a beating late one night she broke down, poured kerosene over her head and set herself alight. "I felt that death was better than this life," she said. Her husband quickly divorced her and married again.
Islam is submission
A religion that condones human enslavement is ... evil.
This is the chink in Islam's armor. It must be exploited.
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