Pakistani graduate raped to punish her low-caste family http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article648817.ece
Dean Nelson, Delhi, and Ghulam Hasnain, Karachi
A YOUNG Pakistani woman has been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a gang of high-caste villagers because her uncle eloped with one of their relatives. She was chosen for punishment because she had recently gained a degree and was the pride of her low-caste family.
Ghazala Shaheen, 24, and her mother Mumtaz were abducted last month by men dressed in police uniforms from their home near Multan in southern Punjab.
Her shocking ordeal mirrors that of Mukhtaran Mai, 29, who became a symbol in the campaign for womens rights in Pakistan after she was gang-raped because her 12-year-old brother had been seen with a higher-caste woman. Six men were found guilty but five later had their convictions overturned.
That case provoked an international outcry and led to moves to reform Pakistans Islamic rape and adultery laws which effectively criminalise rape victims.
Last week human rights campaigners said Shaheen was unlikely to see her attackers brought to justice because President Pervez Musharraf had failed in an attempt to repeal the Hudood Ordinance, which requires four male Muslim witnesses to support a rape charge. If the accused is acquitted, the victim becomes liable to prosecution for adultery.
While Musharraf was out of the country earlier this month, a committee of hardline Islamic scholars neutered his bill to protect womens rights which would have repealed the Hudood Ordinance. The scholars claimed the bill was un-Islamic because it encouraged adultery.
Shaheens ordeal began last month when 11 armed men, believed to be security guards employed by one of Musharrafs ministers, forced their way into her home, attacked her father and brothers and pulled her and her mother into the street.
They said we were wanted by the police and dragged me and my mother outside. My shirt was torn off in the struggle, she said last week.
Outside, I saw about six or seven motorcycles. They put me on one and my mother on another. We were crying and shouting. They threatened to kill us if we kept shouting. They gagged our mouths with sheets. At one point my mother started resisting and she was beaten with guns.
They were moved between isolated desert houses at first. As night fell on the third day, Shaheens mother was taken to another location and she was left alone with one of the gang members.
This man sat next to me. A moment later he was on to me. He hit me with his gun on my back and on my body and raped me. I was crying and weeping. But he did not listen, and he repeated it, she said.
In the morning, I was told to stand up and accompany this man. I was in pain. I could barely walk. Finally we reached a big house with Nazar Mirani (the gang leader) sitting outside. The man who had raped me told Nazar that he had done what he wanted with me and now it was his turn. They took me to a nearby cotton field and Nazar Mirani raped me.
Shaheen said she knew Miranis name because he had filed a case against her uncle, accusing him of eloping with his wife. Mirani had previously threatened and harassed her father, a former soldier who runs a shop from their mud and brick home.
Mirani later told Shaheen he was taking her to Lahore to marry her so that she could not give evidence against him or his men. As the women were being driven from the house, they were stopped at a police roadblock and freed by officers Shaheens father had alerted.
According to her relatives, she had been selected as a kidnap target to maximise her familys humiliation. She had been been the first in her family to gain a degree. This earned her a job as a local schoolteacher, but the offer was withdrawn after officials said they did not want to be associated with someone who had been raped.
Shaheen said she was determined to bring her kidnappers and rapists to justice. My mission is to get all of them arrested and hanged, so they cannot do this to any other woman, she said.
The prospects of a successful prosecution appear slim. Only Mirani has been arrested on kidnapping charges, and without the four essential witnesses a rape conviction is unlikely.
Rashid Rehman of Pakistans Human Rights Commission said that while hospital tests confirmed Shaheen had been raped, the examination was conducted too late to identify the rapists.
Ghazala Shaheen has no chance of getting justice. The evidence has been destroyed. Doctors confirm she has been raped but she cant prove that she has been raped by the suspects, he said. There are hundreds of similar cases in southern Punjab every year, he added.
Six men found guilty in gang rape http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/08/31/pakistan.gang.rape/
Thursday, December 12, 2002 Posted: 2:16 AM EST (0716 GMT)
DERA GHAZI KHAN, Pakistan -- A judge sentenced six men to death by hanging Sunday for their roles in the gang rape of a woman whose brother was accused of having relations with a higher-caste woman, the prosecutor said.
A judge in an anti-terrorism court trial in Dera Ghazi Khan convicted four of the men of raping 30-year-old Mukhtaran Bibi, said prosecuting attorney Malik Ramzan Joya.
Two other men were convicted of abetting the rape. They were part of a 10-person tribal council that authorized the rape. The other eight members were acquitted.
After Bibi's brother was accused of having relations with a higher-caste woman, members of her family called a tribal council to determine proper punishment.
That punishment was for the four men to gang rape the man's sister. The rape occurred June 22 in Meerawala, a small town in Punjab province in central Pakistan.
Bibi was dragged to a house, where she was raped. She then was thrown out of the house and forced to walk nearly naked to her parents' house as hundreds of villagers stared at her.
The case sparked outrage across Pakistan.
The verdict was announced shortly after midnight. The woman's lawyer said her client -- who lives with her parents -- had not been told of the verdict, because of the late hour.
The men have seven days to appeal the verdict.
Earlier, Bibi appealed to the government for a safer place to live, saying she has been threatened with revenge if the men were convicted.
Bibi told Reuters news agency that relatives of the defendants had threatened to kill members of her family if the 14 were convicted.
"We are receiving death threats," Bibi told Reuters from her home in Meerawala.
The four convicted of rape come from the wealthy Mastoi clan.
"They have told us that if their four people are sentenced to death, they would kill eight of our men," Bibi said.
"Not only my family, but those who supported us are being threatened with dire consequences."
Police protection has been provided for the family but has done little to ease fears of revenge.
When the 10 village elders ordered the rape, it sent shockwaves across the country and made headlines around the world casting the spotlight on Pakistan's police and judicial system.
In July, the supreme court in Islamabad issued a stinging rebuke of local police accusing them of negligence for failing to even register a case until more than a week after the rape took place.
As a result of perceived security threats, the 23-day trial was held behind closed doors at the special anti-terrorism court.
Extra security forces were deployed in the town ahead of the expected verdict with an increased police presence in Meerwala.
Prior to the rape, Bibi says she turned to the village's tribal council after her brother was kidnapped by a family from the Mastoi clan and accused of raping one of its members.
The brother, Abdul Shakoor, was reportedly sodomized by Mastoi men as punishment.
However, the council's elders ruled that in order to save the honor of the Mastoi family, Shakoor would have to marry the woman with whom he was linked.
Furthermore the council ruled Bibi was to be given away in marriage to a Mastoi man.
The prosecution charges that when Bibi rejected that decision she was gang-raped by four Mastoi men.
The woman's father said he was forced to witness the rape, although he begged continually for the attackers to stop.
A defense lawyer for one of the accused argued during the trial that the rape charge against his client was invalid because Bibi was technically married to him at the time.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asia ... gang.rape/
