honor5

Honour killings are but an extreme form of violence against women which appears to be approved by wide sections of society in Pakistan and is ignored by the state. Much of domestic violence in Pakistan is meted out to women in a habitual manner, arising from a male conviction that women deserve no other treatment. However, some violence is deliberate and punitive, intended to punish a woman for perceived insubordination which translates into an unpardonable transgression of a family or tribal norm. Sabira Khan, married at 16 to a man more than twice her age, was shortly after her wedding in 1991 told by her husband that she must never see her family again. When in December 1993 she tried to break this rule, he and his mother poured kerosene over her and set her on fire, though she was three months pregnant. Despite 60% burns she survived, badly scarred. Many operations later, she still needs restorative surgery to ears and eyes. She has fought since her husband's attack to bring charges against him - so far in vain. The Magistrate in Jhelum upheld her husband's argument that Sabira was insane and had set herself on fire. An appeal is pending in the Rawalpindi High Court bench.

The annual report for 1998 of the HRCP states bluntly: "Woman's subordination remained so routine by custom and traditions, and even putatively by religion, that much of the endemic domestic violence against her was considered normal behaviour. ... Domestic violence was common. A sample survey showed 82% of women in rural Punjab feared violence resulting from husbands' displeasure over minor matters; in the most developed urban areas 52% admitted being beaten by husbands... Burning by husbands and/or in-laws remained one extreme and widely occurring form of violence in Punjab. The reported cases of 1998 in and around Lahore alone numbered 282, only a minority (35%) of whom survived. The official claim of deaths from burning [made by the minister for the interior before parliament] was 59 in Punjab, 71 in Sindh and one in NWFP." ⁴¹ The survey found that more than two-thirds of both males and females considered disobedience a sufficient reason for beating. It also established that women in paid employment who had thus gained a degree of independence were more liable to physical abuse than women doing unpaid labour.

Shahnaz Bokhari of the Progressive Women's Association in Islamabad told Amnesty International that since March 1994, when the organization was set up, it monitored 1,600 cases of women burned in their homes in the twin-cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad alone. These are only reported cases whereas a large number of such cases must be assumed never to be made public - many women even in a big city never make it to the hospital. Shahnaz Bokhari said that most of the women have high degrees burns and that increasingly victims include unmarried girls and women seeking education and employment, apparently slipping from male control. The high mortality rate also reflects the lack of knowledge of first aid and of equipment. The twin cities Rawalpindi and Islamabad only has two hospitals with small burns units, while other hospitals lack facilities and often have highly infectious environments.

Police, if they register a complaint at all, often accept bribes, then manipulate evidence and use sections of the penal code carrying lower penalties. They usually accept husbands' claims that the stove burst was accidental - but as Shahnaz Bokhari noted, "Why are the victims always young wives, when in big families other and older women often do the cooking? Why does in an extended family, where there are always people around, nobody notice the 'accident' till it is too late? Why are the stoves that are supposed to have burst never found?"

Courts, too, frequently side with the offenders and utilize the slightest element of doubt to acquit offenders. Due to social pressure, witnesses rarely come forward, and the victims assuming that they will be cured do not wish to charge family members they have to return to or who may make life difficult for their children. Declarations made by women on their deathbeds have been challenged when slight discrepancies are found which may be due to the dying women's pain and distress. Parents often do not pursue the cases of their daughters burned to death as they have little hope of succeeding. Shahnaz Bokhari reported that of the 60 cases brought to prosecution (out of 1,600 recorded cases), only two led to convictions. Even when guilt is established, the law of Qisas and Diyat (see below) facilitates compromise and protects the perpetrators from punishment.

In February 1999, Amnesty International delegates visited a young 17 or 18-year-old woman in the Liaqat Medical College Hospital in Hyderabad; she had suffered 60% burns and was quietly whimpering and gasping for breath as her mother sat by her side and stroked her hair. The mother said the young woman's dupatta (scarf) had caught fire and the fire spread quickly over her back and entire body. Her father was choking back tears as he was aware that his daughter was dying. He said that she claimed to be married but was unable to show them her husband or the nikahnama (marriage certificate). The doctor attending to the dying woman said she was about six months pregnant. The "accident" had occurred when her pregnancy had become visible.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 5

Given the close link between a woman's conformity to customary norms of chastity and the honour of family or tribe, insulting or humiliating women is an easy way to inflict insult to their families or tribes. Women may thus become the victims of punitive violence the intended aim of which is someone else, a man of their family or their family as a whole. This is already evident in verbal conflicts. Insults between men in a brawl usually take the form of slurs against the chastity of their mothers, sisters or daughters.

This equation is not lost on men seeking revenge against other men or families, leading to soaring instances of public sexual humiliation of women. In its annual report for 1998, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan lists several of the 54 cases of women being publicly stripped and dragged through the streets in the Punjab reported in Lahore newspapers in the first 10 months of 1998. On 3 July 1998, a big landlord in Chak 15 near Multan along with his men raided the home of Allah Wasaya, molested three women of the family and forced them to walk naked through the village in punishment for a villager not agreeing to vacate a piece of land desired by the landlord.

The link between honour issues and the perception of women as the property of men is manifest in the following case reported by the HRCP: "Mohammad Ramzan of Maisli had a suspicion that his son-in-law was planning to divorce his daughter to marry ...[another woman]. So one day in August [1998] he and five of his men lifted Mohammad Ramzan's daughter, stripped her, tarred her face black, put garland of shoes round her neck and paraded her through the village before returning her home."⁴² Since the woman had passed into the 'possession' of her husband, Ramzan could, by humiliating her, undermine his son-in-law's honour. The fact that she was his daughter does not appear to have played any role in this decision, nor any recognition that women have an identify and rights of their own.