GANG-RAPE VICTIM IN PAKISTAN IS DEALT LEGAL BLOW

Five Convictions Tossed; Reform Call Renewed

By Victoria Burnett, Boston Globe, March 11, 2005

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Things had been improving for Mukhtaran Bibi.
After gaining the attention of the world in June 2002 as the victim of a
gang rape ordered by a tribal council in Pakistan's Punjab Province, she
had used her government-awarded compensation to set up village schools.
Six men convicted for their part in the rape were on death row. The slight
32-year-old was learning to read.

Then last week, a court overturned the convictions of five of the six men.
It commuted the sixth man's death sentence to life in prison.
Bibi vowed this week to fight the court's decision.

''The correct judgment was the first one. I want to see those men put to
death," she said.

Horror over the ruling in Bibi's case has prompted renewed calls from
lawmakers and human rights activists for reform of the web of arcane laws
and tribal codes that traps Pakistan's women in a cycle of abuse and
impunity.

Local women's activists said on Monday that as many as 4,000 men, women,
and children had gathered in Multan, a city in southern Punjab, to show
support for Bibi.

Her case also underscores the limits of President Pervez Musharraf's power
to promote his agenda of ''enlightened moderation" -- being a moderate,
modern Muslim -- in the face of fierce resistance from religious
conservatives and feudal tribal leaders.

According to rights activists and political analysts, the same religious
and tribal sensitivities that Musharraf has struggled to appease as he
cooperates with the US war on terrorism hold the government back from
bolder action on reforms that would favor women.

''The state has entirely failed to provide justice to women. These people
who advocate enlightened moderation -- this is a huge embarrassment to
them," said Naeem Mirza, a director of the Aurat Foundation, a women's
rights group based in Islamabad.

First, Bibi was a victim of medieval tribal custom. A panchayat, or
council, from a rival tribe ordered that she be raped by four men to
settle a dispute in which her brother was accused of engaging in sexual
relations with a local girl.

Such rulings are illegal. But the government's wariness of taking on
powerful tribal leaders and its inability to control Pakistan's vast
hinterlands means they are common.

Hundreds of Pakistani women each year are killed, raped, or given away as
brides to compensate for wrongs to another family and restore their own
family's honor -- acts often known as honor crimes.

Now, legal and human rights specialists said, Bibi has become a victim of
Pakistan's rape and adultery law and its corrupt judicial system.
When it overturned the six sentences last week, the Multan bench of the
Lahore High Court said some witness statements were inconsistent and the
evidence was insufficient. Its full rationale will not be clear until it
publishes its judgment in the coming weeks.

Majida Razvi, a retired judge and chairwoman of the National Commission on
the Status of Women, said the court may have received insufficient
evidence to satisfy the notorious Hudood Ordinances, a set of Pakistani
laws that requires four male witnesses to prove that a rape occurred.
''Under Hudood law, rape is hard to prove. You're not going to rape
somebody with four eyewitnesses watching," she said.

Given that hundreds of Bibi's fellow villagers witnessed her humiliation
from outside the hut where it occurred and saw her walk, half-naked, back
to her house, the decision to overturn the convictions probably stemmed
from corruption or impartiality on the part of the police or judges,
rights activists and legal specialists said.

The government has sworn to fight the decision. Amid international outcry
after Bibi's rape, Musharraf helped secure a swift trial in her case in
2002.

''The government will stand by her and go for an appeal in the Supreme
Court," Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed said yesterday.
But women's rights activists are skeptical of the government's ability to
ensure a fair judgment or Bibi's safety once her alleged attackers are
released from jail. They can be held for up to 90 days after acquittal.

Mirza points to high-profile cases where government expressions of support
and offers of protection failed to instill confidence in the victims of
honor crimes, who fled the country.

A police detachment has been posted in Bibi's village of Meerwala, in
southern Punjab, and she is accompanied by an escort when she travels. She
is demanding further protection, but Ahmed said she already has as much as
any minister on a terrorist hit-list.

Meanwhile, activists and parliamentarians hope the international attention
received by Bibi's case will prod the government to toughen penalties for
those who commit honor crimes and push for reform or repeal of the Hudood
Ordinances.

Parliament in December passed a government-sponsored bill that raised the
maximum penalty for honor killings to life in prison. The ruling Pakistani
Muslim League party hailed the bill as a major step toward protecting
women, but opposition members and some of its own female lawmakers
dismissed it as full of legal loopholes.

Kashmala Tariq, a member of parliament for the ruling party, said the
problem does not lie with Musharraf himself but with reactionaries within
the ruling party, as well as the conservative Islamist parties.

''Musharraf is a very enlightened man. He's very supportive," she said.
''But our party is full of fundamentalists. A lot of them are feudals and
they don't want women to get empowered."

While the government has made headway -- if limited -- to strengthen
penalties for honor crimes, it has made no progress toward overhauling the
Hudood laws. Musharraf has said they should be ''studied," but reformists
argue they are so flawed they must be scrapped.

''The [Hudood] law is defective," Razvi said. ''A law that cannot provide
justice to people should be repealed."

Those reformists face an uphill battle. Staunch opposition from Islamist
parties has made the issue untouchable, lawmakers and activists say. Qazi
Hussein Ahmed, head of the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party, said the
Hudood law could not be changed because it was based on Islam. It was the
corrupt judicial machinery that was at fault, not the Hudood law, he said.

While the political debate swirls around Bibi, she has remained in her
village. She vows to stay, despite threats from the families of the jailed
men. Her schools for boys and girls -- overflowing with about 370 students
-- have drawn international support.

Bibi said that ignorance was at the root of the crime committed against
her, and it is her duty to fight it.

''What I have suffered, so many other women have suffered," she said.
''This is not just my plight, it is the plight of all Pakistani women."