Overseas Feature
Honour killings leave Pakistan's women fighting their own war on terrorism
Pakistani
women's rights activist Nighat Taufeeq shows pictures of victims
of centuries old tribal ritual of Karo Kari, in Karachi 07 March
2000, which entails death for women if suspected of adultery.
Hundreds of women of all ages, for a variety of reasons connected
with perceptions of honour, are killed every year in the southwestern
Balochistan and southern Sindh provinces, according to human rights
activists. AFP PHOTO/Owais TOHID
By Samantha Brown
ISLAMABAD, (AFP) - While Pakistan fights global terrorism alongside the United States and its allies, the country's women are engaged in their own war against the terror of escalating "honour" killings.
Such murders -- where a man kills a woman he views as having sullied his "honour" -- are on the rise, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRC) says, "with more and more reported from areas where they had once been unknown".
In 2001, at least 226 women in the southern province of Sindh were killed -- usually by their husbands or brothers -- while some 227 honour-related killings took place in the Punjab, according to the HRC's annual report issued earlier this year.
"The real figures are likely to be higher," says the Commission's Kamila Hyat, adding that figures were not compiled for Pakistan's other two provinces because of the sketchy nature of reports.
Academic Tahira Khan, who has spent five years studying honour killings, agrees that the trend is upwards, "not only in Pakistan ... but all over the Muslim world where honour killings were occurring before."
At the heart of the killings are ingrained social attitudes towards female sexuality, and changing attitudes of women to their own sexuality through greater exposure to the rest of the world, she says.
Such new attitudes have led them to "protest against forced marriages, assert their right to get married according to their own choice, or reject marriage", which can lead to a family backlash as serious as murder.
But killings can occur over actions much less momentous -- a mere flirtatious look misconstrued as a sign of an illicit relationship can be a catalyst to murder.
Finding a female relative in a so-called "objectionable" or "compromising" position with another man, often meaning that the two are merely alone together in the same room, is often used to justify honour killings.
Perhaps most worryingly, so-called fake honour killings are surging to the point of being an "epidemic", Khan says.
Fake honour killings are when a man kills a woman, usually a relative, to cover up the real reason he has murdered another man.
Alleging his honour was outraged by saying he saw them in a compromising position is enough to win him a lesser sentence under Pakistan's court system, says Shahnaz Bokhari of the Progressive Women's Association.
Since 1994 the non-governmental organisation has dealt with some 5,000 cases of honour-related crimes in the region surrounding the capital, Islamabad.
"On my fingertips I can count the success stories out of these cases," she fumes. "This violence is on the rise because the prosecution rate is negligible... men know they can get away with it."
The positive aspect of greater awareness is that more women are reporting crimes against them.
"We can no longer say we're seeing just the tip of the iceberg," she says, estimating that around 40 percent of cases are reported.
The other 60 percent of victims do not understand their rights, or are afraid of going against the traditions of their people.
These are the women who turn up at hospital attributing horrific injuries to "accidents", such as a scarf catching alight over a stove, Bhokari says.
"But what I have seen in many cases is the woman's sensitive parts burned -- her face, the upper part of her body, the lower body. How could a fire travel straight there?"
Bokhari is waging a separate battle to set up more support for women who fear an attack, opening a safe house four years ago for up to 35 women and their children -- the only shelter in Islamabad and adjacent Rawalpindi.
"There is no support system -- this is what we have been shouting about for years," she says.
Bokhari herself faces charges of "abetting adultery" filed two years ago by the former husband of a woman who left the shelter unaccompanied by a male relative.
Meanwhile academic Khan wants to see greater political will to address the issue.
"I don't think (the killings) can be reduced the way the NGOs are approaching them," she says, adding that laws are already in place to deal with perpetrators.
"They get to the point where they're quiet -- they don't criticise the government because they're scared... It's a very complex situation."