Horror and Hope
From Pakistan, there is a horrifying and completely ordinary tale.
In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused one of Ms. Mukhtaran’s brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village’s tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy’s sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.
. . .
In Pakistan’s conservative Muslim society, Ms. Mukhtaran’s duty was now clear: she was supposed to commit suicide. “Just like other women, I initially thought of killing myself,” said Ms. Mukhtaran, now 30. Her older brother, Hezoor Bux, explained: “A girl who has been raped has no honorable place in the village. Nobody respects the girl, or her parents. There’s a stigma, and the only way out is suicide.”
A girl in the next village was gang-raped a week after Ms. Mukhtaran, and she took the traditional route: she swallowed a bottle of pesticide and dropped dead.
But there is something extraordinary, too: Ms. Mukhtaran survived, fought back, won a victory for justice and struck a fragile note of hope.
But instead of killing herself, Ms. Mukhtaran testified against her attackers and propounded the shocking idea that the shame lies in raping, rather than in being raped. The rapists are now on death row, and President Pervez Musharraf presented Ms. Mukhtaran with the equivalent of $8,300 and ordered round-the-clock police protection for her.
Ms. Mukhtaran, who had never gone to school herself, used the money to build one school in the village for girls and another for boys – because, she said, education is the best way to achieve social change. The girls’ school is named for her, and she is now studying in its fourth-grade class.
Unfortunately, that note of hope is fragile not only because of the terrible crime that Ms. Mukhtaran survived, but also because the Pakistani government is threatening to undo, by neglect, the remarkable victory that Ms. Mukhtaran won.
But the Pakistani government has neglected its pledge to pay the schools’ operating expenses. “The government made lots of promises, but it hasn’t done much,” Ms. Mukhtaran said bluntly.
She has had to buy food for the police who protect her, as well as pay some school expenses. So, she said, “I’ve run out of money.” Unless the schools can raise new funds, they may have to close.
Meanwhile, villagers say that relatives of the rapists are waiting for the police to leave and then will put Ms. Mukhtaran in her place by slaughtering her and her entire family.
Don’t let it end in tragedy. You can send contributions directly to Ms. Bibi by writing a check directly to Mukhtaran Bibi
and sending it to:
Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times
229 West 43rd St.
New York, NY 10036
Or directly to Ms. Bibi by international post at:
Mukhtaran Bibi
Meerwala
Tehsil Jatoi
Post Office Wadowallah
District Muzaffargarh
Punjab
Pakistan
Any amount of money, no matter how small, helps. (Remember that theschools themselves were established on about US$8,500.) Do it. Now. It’ll mean a lot more than anything else you accomplish by sitting around on the Internet. After you’ve done it, you can read my kvetching about Nicholas Kristof below, but this is more important.