We were here in the 1986 when a poor, blind girl was raped and - because she was physically unable to identify her rapists or provide four witnesses to her attack - convicted of adultery and incarcerated.
We were here when in 2002, a 26-year-old-woman from Kohat was raped by her several of her brothers-in-law, forced into an unwanted pregnancy by her in-laws, and then sentenced to death by stoning for “adultery” in a trial which used the baby as proof of her infidelity.
We were here when 30-year-old Mukhtaran Bibi was gang-raped on the orders of a village council as an “honour rape” after unproved allegations that her 12-year-old brother had had sexual relations with a woman from a higher caste.
We were here when then President Musharraf said women are making up cases of rape to get international attention and live abroad, despite the fact that 18 years later, Mukhtaran Bibi still lives in Pakistan while that man fled.
We were here when in 2002 when a girl from Rahim Yar Khan fought back against her rapist and was doused with petrol and burnt alive as punishment. Her rather was pressured not to press charges.
We were here when in 2003 a report by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) estimated that somewhere up to 80% of women in Pakistani prisons were incarcerated because they had failed to prove rape charges and were subsequently convicted of adultery.
We were here in 2005 when a woman was gang-raped by the police on the refusal of paying bribe so that her husband would be released from prison.
So let us yawn ourselves out of complacency again, sit on chowks with hastily drawn protest signs for instagram and newspapers that most of this county’s men can’t read let alone internalize
We were here in September 2015 when Safia Bibi, a deaf and dumb Christian woman, was raped at gunpoint in her house in village near Kasur and her rapist was granted bail.
We were here in 2015 when it came out that one of the worlds largest child pornography rings was operating outside of Kasur (protected by one of its participants, an MPA), which exposed 280 individual incidents incidents of videotaping the rape of children in order to blackmail them, and their parents, into quiet, horrific submission for cycles of sexual abuse.
We were here in January 2018 when a seven-year-old girl named Zainab Ansari was raped and strangled to death, also in Kasur, while her family was away.
Sectarian organizations protest in Karachi
These are not isolated incidents, they are the result of what happens when a society - like Pakistan - considers women and children nothing more than breeding animals and sexual playthings. This is what happens when a sitting Prime Minister advocates the use of barbaric, extrajudicial, archaic “jirga” systems as a viable alternative to the court of law. This is what happens when you propagate and protect a culture that affirms in law that it takes four women to match the testimony of one man. This is what happens when a mother is raped in front of her children on a highway, and later blamed by the chief of police for not having taken a different route.
This is what happens when a toxic society hates women and tells its boys and men - again and again and again - that not only is that hate alright, it is a divinely justified display of masculinity. This is what happens when schoolgirls get shot for trying to go to school. This is what happens when only women’s bodies are the repository of men’s honour. This is what happens when you allow men who’ve only read one book impose their barbarism on a whole country for decades.
This is Hell, and we made it.
So let us yawn ourselves out of complacency again, sit on chowks with hastily drawn protest signs for instagram and newspapers that most of this county’s men can’t read let alone internalize. Let us pretend those protests were more attended than the ones calling Shia non-Muslims. Let us pretend that the problem is not a broken society that demonizes choice and sex.
Let’s pretend that the problem is actually about capital punishment, and not the Hudood ordinance. Let’s pretend that the those who rule us are not complicit in radically backward thinkers gaining traction. Lets pretend that 93% of Pakistani women - across all ages and class backgrounds - have not experienced some sort of sexual assault in their life, often from within their family, and that the silence we force on them is their choice and not ours. Let us pretend its their fault.
Let’s pretend, because that way we won’t have to actually do anything. Until the next time, and the next, and the next.
