honor7

The notion of the defilement of male honour has extended over time to include not only sexual 'misdemeanour' but also other acts of defiance of male control. Expressing a desire to choose a marriage partner and actually contracting a marriage with a partner of one's choice in a society where the majority of marriages are arranged by parents, are considered major acts of defiance. Such acts are perceived to defile the honour of the man to whom the young woman 'belongs' and who can expect a bride price at her marriage. Women who marry a man of their choice moreover take recourse to state law, placing themselves outside the traditional scheme; by the public nature of their action they shame their guardians leading them to resort to violence to restore their honour. Marriage arrangements are delicate and seen to involve careful balancing acts; any disturbance of this balance by a woman refusing a father's choice are considered to affect the father's standing in society.

Frequently fathers bring charges of zina [fornication] against daughters who have married partners of their choice, alleging that they did not contract a valid marriage.³⁰ But even when such a complaint is before a court, some men resort to private justice in the form of honour killings. Sher Bano had earlier eloped with a man she wanted to marry but was apprehended and arrested under the Zina Ordinance. On 6 August 1997, when she emerged under police guard from the court room in the sessions court in Peshawar after submitting her bail application, her brother shot her dead.

Sometimes women are killed for alleged sexual impropriety in a marriage arrangement context when different male relatives have different marital arrangements in mind and the woman is caught between conflicting requirements of obedience. Seventeen-year-old Nagina Bibi in Tarali Kalan near Islamabad, was engaged by her father to her cousin but her brother wanted her to marry his wife's brother. After her brother saw her talk to the cousin chosen by their father on the street, he and another brother on 14 April 1994 reportedly tied Nagina with a rope to a wooden post in their home, sprinkled kerosene over her and set her on fire. Neighbours had her admitted to a hospital with 75% burns, which the family claimed to be due to a stove bursting. Nagina told doctors that her brother had set her on fire because she had disobeyed him. The Progressive Women's Association investigated the case and had a case registered against the brothers, both of whom were arrested. One of the brothers admitted that he had burned Nagina with the help of his brother, because she had taken the liberty to talk to her cousin on the street. Nagina died after 23 painful days in hospital. It is not known at present if the brothers' case has gone to court.

Several of the women whom Amnesty International met in the state-run women's shelters called Darul Aman [literally: house of peace], in Sukkur, Larkana and Hyderabad had fled because of fear of lethal violence when they had disagreed with or refused their father's choice of a marriage partner. Seventeen-year-old H. [name withheld] in the Larkana Darul Aman had in early childhood been engaged to a man she disliked and whom she described as a thief and 'bad character'. When the wedding date drew near, H. was threatened with death if she continued to refuse the arrangement; she then fled to the shelter. H. did not believe that her family would accept her wishes as the selected husband was her mother's cousin and it would involve a loss of face if the arrangement was broken off. She did not have much hope of a resolution of her problem but was adamant that she would not go back.

R.'s [name withheld] case illustrates how being disowned by a family over a marriage without family consent cuts a woman loose from her social moorings and renders her vulnerable to exploitation. She told Amnesty International in the Hyderabad Darul Aman that at the age of 15 or 16 she had married a man from another tribe against her family's wishes; after three years of marriage her husband verbally divorced her but as her family had threatened to kill her for marrying a man of her choice, she had nowhere to go. She took up begging at various tombs and shrines. Eight years later she married another man but was one day recognized by her first husband who wanted her to work for him as a beggar and threatened to bring charges of zina against her for living with another man as he denied having divorced her. She was arrested by police; meanwhile the local wadera [landlord] intervened and had her brought before a magistrate who sent her to protective custody in the Darul Aman. At the time Amnesty International met her, she was unsure if zina charges had actually been filed and did not know at all what was going to happen to her.

Satta-watta marriages in which siblings are married to siblings of another family, put an additional burden on women to abide by parental marriage arrangement and to neither refuse marriage nor seek divorce. All marriage arrangements are understood to be about balance, involving the transfer of women for an appropriate bride price; in satta-watta marriages the delicate balance additionally involves exchange of siblings. The two couples so linked must remain perfectly balanced for the sake of the honour of the parents responsible for the arrangement.

In Humaira's case (described below), Humaira's parents had promised her to a man in a satta-watta arrangement and her refusal to abide by it brought shame on her parents. Similarly Shaheen was allegedly set on fire by her husband Anwar in Gujjarpura in December 1998 in a satta-watta context. Their marriage had run into trouble and Anwar felt humiliated that when he wanted to send his wife Shaheen back to her parents, Shaheen's brother, married to Anwar's sister, refused to send his wife home as well. He found no other way to remove his shame than to kill his wife.³¹ Similarly in Samia Sarwar's case (described below), the mothers of husband and wife were sisters and hence Samia's attempt to seek divorce proved an unbearable slur on her parents' honour.

Often women choosing their spouses are abducted and not heard of again, perhaps murdered with no questions asked and no police action taken. While writing this report, on 16 May 1999, Adbul Ghaffar and his wife Shabana Bibi who got married a month earlier against the will of their elders, were reportedly abducted from the sessions court in Gujranwala, Punjab province, where the Lahore High Court had advised them to record their statement that they were validly married after Shabana's parents had filed an abduction charge against Abdul Ghaffar. While they were waiting for the hearing to begin, 16 armed men, several of whom were reportedly identified as belonging to the woman's family, burst into the court room, in the presence of dozens of passively watching police officers, and abducted the couple at gunpoint. It is not known to Amnesty International what happened to the couple later.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16

In early February 1999, Zuleikha, a young woman of the Banglani tribe who had married a husband of the Khosa tribe, was reportedly shot dead by male relatives in Thul village in the interior of Sindh; her husband escaped. A local newspaper commented:

"The only thing unusual about the event is that, unlike hundreds of other such killings across the country, Zuleikha's murder has been reported and become public. Otherwise, most family murders over marriage rows are buried with the victim. So entrenched and deep-rooted is this tradition of linking a tribe's honour with its women's marriages that rural communities tend to take their murder in the stride of an inescapable eventuality, something that has to happen because of the women's 'violation' of tribal or caste code. ... The helplessness of rural folks, especially women, is beyond the grasp of imagination. These voiceless creatures, shackled in a primitive mode of life, are treated worse than even tradable commodities: they are but household possessions, living and dying at their males' whims."³²

The latest unresolved case brought to Amnesty International's notice is the abduction of Uzma Talpur. Uzma had married Nasir Rajput, whom she had met in college, on 14 November 1998 against the wishes of her father who wanted her to marry her cousin Masroor, whom she disliked. The couple fled to her husband's village in Jhelum district but police raided their home and arrested them on 30 November on the basis of a zina and abduction charge registered in Hyderabad - despite their showing police their valid nikahnama [marriage certificate]. They were brought to Hyderabad on 1 December 1998, where Uzma was handed over by the magistrate to her family while the husband was held and reportedly tortured in a police station whose station house officer was a member of the Talpur tribe. Nasir Rajput said that while he was in police custody, Uzma's family threatened to kill his entire family if he did not sign blank papers. When he complied, he was released. Nasir Rajput filed a constitutional petition in the Sindh High Court that his wife be released from her parents' unlawful custody, that the First Information Report (FIR) alleging abduction and zina be quashed and action be taken against those responsible for harassing and threatening the couple. The court asked the family several times to bring Uzma to court but they did not comply. At a hearing on 6 May, police informed the court that the family had left Hyderabad four months earlier. At a hearing on 10 May, counsel for the family reportedly claimed that Uzma had been abducted by unknown men and that they did not know where she was. Subsequently, Uzma's father Gul Mohammad Talpur filed a complaint in Cantonment police station of Hyderabad alleging that four unknown persons, at the behest of Nasir Rajput, had kidnapped his daughter from the court premises. At a hearing on 21 June, the Station House Officer stated before the Sindh High Court that such a kidnapping had not taken place. The Sindh High Court ordered a general search for Uzma's recovery. At the time of printing this report, Uzma's whereabouts remained unknown.

The illegal detention, ill-treatment and abduction of Humaira Khokhar, in violation of high court orders, show to what extent an educated middle-class father will go if his perceived right to arrange his daughter's marriage is challenged. He threatened her with death, committed perjury and used the entire state machinery to which he as a parliamentarian had access to enforce his daughter's obedience. Without the intervention of alert women's rights activists, neither Humaira nor her chosen husband would probably be alive today. Unfortunately such cases are not few: the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said that at least four to five cases of women forcibly prevented by their fathers from marrying men of their choice reach the high court every month.

Humaira Khokhar, the 29-year-old daughter of locally influential landowner and sitting member of Punjab provincial assembly for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Malik Abbas Khokhar, on 16 May 1997 secretly married Mehmood Butt, a businessman settled in the US, against the wishes of her father who had promised her in marriage to her cousin.

She told Amnesty International that when she had disclosed to her parents that she intended to marry a man of her choice, she was beaten up, taken to the surgical ward of a government hospital, where her whole body was tightly bandaged and immobilized. She was detained there for a month. She also said that the cousin to whom she was promised in marriage at the age of three, was cruel and that she had seen him rape a family servant girl.

After the wedding Mehmood Butt returned to the US but came back to Pakistan in August 1998 after Humaira had been forced by her parents to put her thumb impression on a nikahnama [marriage certificate] solemnizing her marriage to her cousin. In November 1998, the couple went to Karachi where Humaira sought protection in the Edhi Centre apprehending that her family would kill her.

On 30 November, Punjab police at the instigation of Humaira's brother on the basis of a false police complaint raided the Edhi Centre and abducted Humaira. At the intervention of women's rights activists with the Governor of Sindh, Humaira was released from her brother's custody and brought on 3 December to the Darul Aman.

Despite Sindh High Court orders not to arrest Humaira on any charges and the Lahore High Court bail order, Humaira, Mehmood Butt and his mother were on 29 January 1999 arrested at Karachi airport by Punjab police and CIA staff. Mehmood Butt said, "They ripped off my wife's veil and dragged her by her hair through the hall, they beat all of us. There were many people witnessing our ordeal but everyone was scared and did not dare help." The three detainees were taken first to a car park of the Aga Khan hospital where they were held overnight, then by road to Okara, Humaira's home town where her father wielded great influence, then to Lahore in Punjab, accompanied by Punjab police and her brother Abbas Khokhar. "We did not know where they would take us and if we would be killed", Humaira said.

In Lahore Humaira was taken to a police station which was sealed off from the public, later to a private house where her father and mother alternatively threatened and enticed her to declare that Mehmood had abducted her and to conform to their wishes with respect to her marriage; her father promised that nothing would happen to Mehmood if she admitted that he had kidnapped her: "I will take care of him, but I don't want him to be your husband", Humaira reported her father as saying. He threatened that "you cannot win this case, I can do what I want, you will have to come with me, I will have your husband cut up". Butt and his mother were meanwhile held in another police station, not knowing what was happening to Humaira.

The Lahore High Court heard Humaira's petition to quash abduction charges against Mehmood Butt and also considered if her marriage was valid. During hearings Humaira confirmed that she had been ill-treated, abducted and threatened with death by members of her family if she did not give up her marriage to Butt. Humaira's father's counsel reportedly said in court that she would be dealt with by her father as an 'adulteress daughter who had crossed the limits of Allah'; he reportedly said that if women were allowed to contract marriages at will, society would suffer disruption.

In what the Pakistan human rights community hailed as 'a landmark judgement', the Lahore High Court on 18 February decided the case: Humaira's marriage to Mehmood Butt was found prima facie valid because it had been duly recorded and was acknowledged by both spouses. The judge severely reprimanded police functionaries who had "acted in a manner which betrayed total disregard of the law of the land and the mandate of their calling" by taking part in the abduction. The police inspector involved in the abduction was sentenced to one month's imprisonment and fine for contempt of court when arresting Humaira despite her pre-arrest bail. He also directed the Medical Superintendent of the Services Hospital to inquire into Humaira's forced confinement in the hospital.

"the case had certain disconcerting overtones. Humaira was to be given in marriage to Moazzam in exchange of the latter's sister who was married to Humaira's brother. On the one hand, there was anguish and pain of a father whose daughter had rebelled and refused to marry a person of his choice and had left her hearth and home to join someone with whom she had contracted marriage. The father called it a sinful act and was not prepared to accept her under any circumstances. On the other hand there was a girl in distress ... waiting for a parental permission to join a husband of her choice. She was in a critical dilemma; i.e. of facing the social consequences of going back to a family fold where she stood eternally stigmatized or to go back with Mehmood whom she stood married to. The former course was full of tension, uncertainty and carried a death threat whereas in the latter course, although there was a death threat, yet it meant a fulfilment of her desire, where she dreamt of security and if she survived the death threat she hoped for an ultimate release from the high walls of feudal bondage. She chose the latter course and wanted the society to accept it. Perhaps she was not asking for too much at this age of her life but she was refused."

Humaira's father's lawyer announced that he would appeal against the judgment and seek a stay to prevent the couple from leaving the country but they had already left Pakistan as they continued to fear for their lives.

³⁰ The Zina Ordinance of 1979 makes zina, fornication and adultery a criminal offence which, if established by the court, can lead to the imposition of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments, including stoning to death and public flogging. For a detailed discussion of the discriminatory nature of the law see: Women in Pakistan: Disadvantaged and denied their rights, AI Index: ASA 33/23/95.