LAHORE, Sept 13: The horrific case of a five-year old girl, who
was gang-raped and then mercilessly left outside Ganga Ram Hospital,
has left many shaken and disgusted.
The fact that there is a complete lack of a system of law and order
in the country hits people each time such an incident occurs. To make
matters worse, the public seems to dwell in its insensitivity and a
state of denial, never raising any cries against the crimes.
“We may try to hide or justify all these incidents but the fact is
that rape does exist and it will be better for us as a society if we
recognise it and try to work from there,” says Irfan Mufti, deputy
director of the South Asia Partnership, an NGO that tries to raise
awareness about gender equality among other issues especially at the
grass-root level.
“The problem in Pakistan is that we have no judicial system, we have
no social system that can help avoid such crimes in future or help give
penalty to the perpetrators for an incident,” he deplores.
Mufti also says a lack of awareness and care that parents have
towards their children is appalling, where small children are left alone
by their parents and are easily susceptible to crimes.
Diep Syeda, a social activist, views the situation as extremely
unfortunate and compares it to the level of protest that took place in
India after the infamous Delhi rape case.
“Not that any country in South Asia is any different but what
happened at such a mass scale in Delhi shows that the civil society was
still alive there. They came out despite circumstances, protested and
put the government under real pressure,” she says. “Here, today the
media acknowledges it but tomorrow all will be forgotten.”
She says it has more or less become fashionable only to discuss such
issues but when it comes to taking to the street, people retreat in fear
of embarrassment. Sumera Salim, Senior Capacity Building Officer of
Aurat Foundation’s Gender Equity programme, proclaims that capital
punishment would be a small penalty to pay for such offenders.
“We have discovered that for some reason these rape cases are more
frequent in Punjab,” she says. “This is surprising because there is no
lack of education as such but I do blame that poverty and unemployment
may have a role to play.”
But Pakistan Criminologists chairman Dr Fateh Muhammad Burfat refutes
this suggestion saying rapists and sexual abusers are essentially “sick
in the head”.
“They cannot be termed normal by any standards even of the direct
reasons of a rape incident lie in family feuds, or some other causes. In
fact we have done a study where many times fake pirs have encouraged
men to get physical with young girls (underage) so that they may
overcome their sexual weaknesses. These men never rape their own family
members so they are clever enough to select their victims, too.”
Dr Burfat says Pakistan was going through an intense period of social
disorganisation where the social system had ‘collapsed’ and all the
institutions such as family, religion, and even police, which kept
people’s behaviour in check to a large extent, had more or less
collapsed. The unfortunate part was that there has been no alternate
social organisation which could replace this collapse. There was only a
void.
“The media has crossed all ethical boundaries and has been airing the
details about the girl without realising the shame and the hurt that
her family can face as a result. The media should realise that it can
talk about the criminals but not about the victims in such detail.
“As for India, the civil society there is organised because they have
a more collective nationalistic spirit. We, on the other hand, have
divided ourselves into communities and groups. We do not fight for the
same cause, even if that cause is to stand up for a minor child.”
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