Rape in Pakistan


Rape in Pakistan came to international attention after the politically sanctioned rape of Mukhtaran Bibi. The group War Against Rape has documented the severity of rape in Pakistan, and the police indifference to it. According to Women's Studies professor Shahla Haeri, rape in Pakistan is "often institutionalized and has the tacit and at times the explicit approval of the state". According to late lawyer Asma Jahangir, who was a co-founder of the women's rights group Women's Action Forum, up to seventy-two percent of women in custody in Pakistan are physically or sexually abused.

Early history

Prior to 1979, Section 375 of the Pakistan Penal Code stated that girls younger than the age of fourteen were prohibited from sex acts even if consent was acquired. Despite this, the previous laws also claims that rape during marriage is not considered rape as long as if the wife is over the age of fourteen.
In 1979, the Pakistani legislature made rape and adultery offences for the first time in the country's history, with the passage of The Offence of Zina Ordinance, 1979. The Ordinance changed the punishment for such offences from imprisonment and fines, to punishments such as stoning to death. Although this new law is stated to protect women, it reinforces that in order to do so there must be concrete evidence. The evidence was most commonly deemed to be a witness who could testify that the rape actually occurred. In 1979, the witness had to be a Muslim male and had to be deemed as credible and honest by the Qazi.
According to the Ordinance, rape is defined as:
the sex is occurring against the will of the person
the individual did not consent to partaking in sexual intercourse
the perpetrator obtains consent by the victim by threatening, hurting or causing fear to the victim.
the perpetrator and victim are not married

Notable cases

Since 2000, various women and teenage girls have begun to speak out after being sexually assaulted. Going against the tradition that a woman should suffer in silence, they have lobbied news outlets and politicians. A recent report from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that in 2009, 46 percent of unlawful female killings in Pakistan were "honour killings".
In January 2018, a seven-year-old girl named Zainab Ansari was raped and strangled to death in Kasur. The incident caused nationwide outrage in Pakistan. The same month, a 16-year-old girl was raped and killed in Sargodha, and a day later, in the same city, a 13-year-old boy was intoxicated and sexually assaulted by two men belonging to an influential family. In Faisalabad, the same day, a 15-year-old boy was found dead. The later medical reports confirmed a sexual assault. A few days later, the dead body of a 3-year-old girl, named Asma, was found in Mardan, who had been reportedly missing for 24 hours. Her postmortem report points that she had been raped before her murder. These unfortunate events caused to shape more proactive role and participation in Pakistan's women's rights movements like 'Me Too movement' and Aurat March.
UNODC Goodwill Ambassador Shehzad Roy collaborated with Bilawal Bhutto to introduce awareness about education against child sexual abuse in Sindh.

Types

The group War Against Rape has documented the severity of the rape problem in Pakistan and of police indifference to it. WAR is an NGO whose mission is to publicize the problem of rape in Pakistan; in a report released in 1992, of 60 reported cases of rape, 20% involved police officers. In 2008 the group claimed that several of its members were assaulted by a religious group as they tried to help a woman who had been gang raped identify her assailants.
According to a study carried out by Human Rights Watch there is a rape once every two hours, a gang rape every hour and 70-90 percent women are suffering with some kind of domestic violence.
According to Women's Studies professor Shahla Haeri, rape in Pakistan is "often institutionalized and has the tacit and at times the explicit approval of the state". According to a study by Human Rights Watch, there is a rape once every two hours and a gang rape every eight. Asma Jahangir, a lawyer and co-founder of the women's rights group Women's Action Forum, reported in a 1988 study of female detainees in Punjab that around 72 percent of them stated they had been sexually abused while in custody.

Marital rape

In Pakistan, approximately 20-30% of women face some form of domestic abuse during their lifetime. Marital rape is a common form of spousal abuse as it is not considered to be a crime under the Zina laws. Many men and women in Pakistan are raised with the beliefs that "sex is a man's right in marriage". Women are instilled with the concept that their purpose in society is to fulfill a man's desires as well as to bear children. The topic of sex is a taboo subject in Pakistan, therefore women often refrain from reporting their experiences with rape. Marital abuse in general is considered to be a family and private matter in Pakistan which is another reason of why women refrain from reporting in fear of social judgement. Non consensual marital sex can lead to issues with reproductive health, unsafe sex, as well as pregnancies. Studies show that martial rape continues through out the course of pregnancies, as well as can lead to the birth of numerous babies. Studies show that marital rape commonly occurs in Pakistan because of the husband's desire to have more children and in particular, to have sons.
Marital rape is treated the same as any other rape in Pakistani law punishable with death by hanging or up to 25 years in prison. However, only one case of marital rape has been reported in Pakistan despite it being a common problem. A woman in Lahore filed a marital rape complaint against her husband in 2007. The husband expressed deep remorse, confessed to his crime, and sought forgiveness from his wife saying that he was pressurized by the wife's mother to try and consummate their marriage, and he feared being labelled impotent as the marriage had not been consummated in several months. The wife turned down husband's pleas. She testified that she has genophobia which she was slowly recovering from, with the help of massages from her husband, who was only allowed to touch her shoulders and her legs up to her knees, if what she was wearing bares them already, and he had sought and been granted explicit permission for a massage. Only her feet could he kissed at anytime without permission.
However, on the night of rape, due to his persistent requests, she allowed him to kiss her bare legs and shoulders too. The permission to kiss her shoulders was rescinded when he licked her armpit, and the permission to kiss her legs was swiftly withdrawn when she caught him peeking up her nightie. At that point, overwhelmed by desire, he pinned her down and attempted intercourse. Upon hearing her cries, he immediately withdrew, but the act of penetration had happened, which had been very traumatic for her. She recommended a sentence of 200 lashes with the whip and a fine of Rs 1 million to the sessions judge hearing the case, who imposed the sentence and added a 6 month deferred prison sentence, which the husband would begin at a time chosen by the wife. She also told her husband that if he filed an appeal against the sentence, then she would divorce him, so the only way for him to get her back was to accept his punishment. The husband did not appeal the sentence so justice was quickly served. Wife attended the flogging, along with representatives of women welfare NGOs. Whipping was divided into sets of 50 lashes with a break of 5 minutes between sets to give the husband a chance to plead his case to his wife.
She refused to pardon him at 50, 100, and 150 and took the whip herself to deliver the last set. After the 199th lash, she stopped, pardoned him, and took him home with her. She later commuted the prison sentence to house arrest and whipping at home. The case highlights what works in the Pakistani judicial system. Notably, in-camera trial with a female judge who hears the case after-hours, female police officers to arrest the culprit, and once the perpetrator is sentenced, also to execute the whipping sentence against him, are essential elements enabling a victim to seek justice while maintaining privacy as the society inflicts substantial shame on the victim effectively forcing women to stay silent. It also highlights several problems in Pakistani society.
Firstly, the role of cultural pressures and expectations from a woman in marriage, with wife's own mother encouraging the husband to try and consummate the marriage against wife's will. Secondly, justice is only available to educated and resourceful Pakistani women with considerable social status, with access to female police, and access to a female judge willing to hold an in-camera trial after hours. Finally, a combination of corporal punishment and fine is an appropriate sentence rather than a long jail sentence, as a wife may be financially dependent on the husband, and the husband may learn his lesson, in particular, if the act was committed under societal pressure to consummate the marriage.

Child sexual abuse

is widespread in Pakistani Islamic schools. In a study of child sexual abuse in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, out of a sample of 300 children 17% claimed to have been abused and in 1997 one child a day was reported as raped, gang raped or kidnapped for sexual gratification. In September 2014, the British Channel 4 broadcast a documentary called Pakistan's Hidden Shame, directed by Mohammed Naqvi and produced by Jamie Doran, which highlighted the problem of sexual abuse of street children in particular, an estimated 90 percent of whom have been sexually abused.
The NGO Sahil reported 3,832 cases of child abuse in 2018 which is an 11 per cent increase from 2017. Most of these cases are reported in Punjab province and the fewest cases were reported in Gilgit Baltistan province. About 72 percent of the cases are reported in rural areas and 28 percent in urban areas.

Kasur scandal

The Kasur child sexual abuse scandal is a series of child sexual abuses that occurred in Hussain Khanwala village in Kasur District, Punjab, Pakistan from 2006 to 2014, culminating in a major political scandal in 2015. After the discovery of hundreds of video clips showing children performing forced sex acts, various Pakistani media organizations estimated that 280 to 300 children, most of them male, were victims of sexual abuse. The scandal involved an organized crime ring that sold child pornography to porn sites, and blackmailed and extorted relatives of the victims.

Revenge rape

In 2002, when a 12-year-old boy was accused of affair with a woman, the jirga ordered his elder sister Mukhtar Mai to be gangraped as a revenge. In 2017 a boy raped 12 year old girl and the jirga ordered his sister to be raped as revenge. But the police arrested them.

Rape of minorities

The rape and assault of Christian, Hindu women are reported in Pakistan. Inaction, refusal to file complaints, intimidation and corruption amongst the police and judiciary are also frequent problems..

Security forces

Founder of Aware Girls, Gulalai Ismail, was threatened with death after she raised awareness of sexual assault on women.

The legal system

, burnings, and rapes in Pakistan can be seen as indicating inadequate legal protection for women. In 1979 Pakistan passed into law the Hudood Ordinance, which made all forms of extra-marital sex, including rape, a crime against the state. Reports of problems with reporting and prosecuting rape persist.
In 2006, the Women's Protection Bill was passed by parliament.
Rape is punishable by death or imprisonment.
Gang rape is punished exclusively by death according to the Zinah Al-Jabr law of the Hudood ordinances.
Corporal punishment is an option for rapists sentenced to imprisonment.

Attitudes

Rape in Pakistan came to international attention after Mukhtaran Bibi charged her attackers with rape and spoke out about her experiences. She was then denied the right to leave the country. The matter of her refused visit to the US was raised in an interview by the Washington Post with the then President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, who claimed to champion "Moderate Islam" that "respect the rights of women", and complained that his country is "unfairly portrayed as a place where rape and other violence against women are rampant and frequently condoned". He said that he had relented over allowing her to leave the country, and remarked that being raped had "become a money-making concern", a way to get rich abroad. This statement provoked an uproar, and Musharraf later denied having made it.
The statement was made in the light of the fact that another rape victim, Dr Shazia Khalid, had left Pakistan, was living in Canada, and had spoken out against official attitudes to rape in Pakistan. Musharraf said of her: "It is the easiest way of doing it. Every second person now wants to come up and get all the because there is so much of finances. Dr. Shazia, I don't know. But maybe she's a case of money, that she wants to make money. She is again talking all against Pakistan, against whatever we've done. But I know what the realities are."
DNA test and other scientific evidence are used in prosecuting rape cases in Pakistan.