(Mukhtar Mai aka Mukhtaran Bibi, who was gang raped in an act of punishment sanctioned by her village elders in Pakistani Punjab in February 2002 because her younger brother was seen with a woman from another tribe, is now writing her own internet diary about her life and her concerns, as an uneducated woman from a remote village.)
Pakistan rape reform fails after President Musharraf caves in, says Jerome Taylor in The Independent.
“In a setback for women’s rights in Pakistan, the ruling party in Islamabad has caved in to religious conservatives by dropping its plans to reform rape laws.
“Statutes known as the Hudood ordinances, based on sharia law, currently operate in Pakistan. They require a female rape victim to produce four male witnesses to corroborate her account, or she risks facing a new charge of adultery.
“The ruling party in Islamabad, made up of a coalition of groups allied to President Pervez Musharraf, had hoped the new Protection of Women Bill would place the crime of rape within the country’s secular penal code, which works in tandem with sharia.
“But the government said rape would remain a crime punished by Islamic law yesterday after conservatives in an opposition group, Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), threatened to walk out of parliament in protest if the government pushed ahead with reforms.
” ‘If there are four witnesses it will be tried under [Islamic law], if there are not, it will be tried under the penal code,’ said the law minister, Mohammad Wasi Zafar. ‘In the case of both adultery and rape, the judge will decide how to try the case.’ A new amended bill will now be presented to parliament on Wednesday.
“Most women refuse to report a rape for fear they will be treated as a criminal. Under current laws, a victim risks courting punishment if she reports a rape allegation as the Hudood ordinances criminalise all extra-marital sex. A woman who fails to prove that she was raped could then be charged with adultery under the same legislation.
“According to a 2002 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours and gang raped every eight hours. However, because of social taboos, discriminatory laws and victimisation of victims by police, campaigners say that the scale of rape is almost certainly higher.”
Meanwhile India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has warned Pakistan that the peace process between the two countries would be jeopardized if Pakistan continues to allow terrorists to use its soil to launch attacks against India.
” ‘But this terrorism will surely act as a dampener. I have said more than once that I can’t carry the Indian public opinion with me if terrorist acts continue to plague our polity. Whatever be the cause of that, that puts a dampener on India-Pakistan relations. Whether in Mumbai or elsewhere, these events certainly vitiate the atmosphere,’ Singh said.
” ‘But as far as the past was concerned, Pak-sponsored terrorism had certainly been a fact of life,’ he said.”
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.