In a rural village in Pakistan's eastern rice belt, two teenage sisters left for school one recent day on a muddy path far too narrow for cars.
Within hours, they were dead, their bodies left face down along a swampy canal after they were raped and shot multiple times, the medical examiner reported. By the next morning, their deaths were news across Pakistan, the latest in
a grisly stream of sexual attacks on minors.
"They were identified by their clothes," Muhammad Nazir, the victims' uncle, said in an interview. "All we know for sure: They went from their house to school, and they were murdered."
For generations, rape was a taboo subject in this conservative Muslim society. As recently as a decade ago, the news about the 14- and 16-year-old sisters might never have traveled beyond this rural area, where rice fields stretch for miles and workers shape bricks from the spongy soil.
But thanks to a freer media and a push by child-welfare advocates to get families to report such crimes, the number of cases under investigation is rising, as is the outrage of parents, the public and advocacy groups.
"People are now reporting things, and people are now seeing children are suffering heinous, horrible crimes," said Narjis Zaidi, a human rights advocate in Islamabad.
On the same day in late September that the sisters were killed on the outskirts of Gujranwala, the body of a 13-year-old girl was found on a Karachi beach after she was raped and killed on the way to school.
A week earlier, a 5-year-old girl was raped multiple times after being kidnapped. She was then dumped outside a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city.
And on a single day — Sept. 20 — Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper reported on the alleged rape of a 4-year-old by his school principal in Faisalabad, and the rapes of another boy, also 4, and a 14-year-old girl. The teenager had been gang-raped by four men over two days, the newspaper reported.
Each case has brought new waves of angry mothers besieging police stations demanding public executions. In Karachi, after the rape of the 5-year-old in Lahore, schoolgirls paraded with signs displaying a noose. In Pakistan's culturally conservative northwest, female lawmakers attempted to block roads in Peshawar to protest the crime, according to media reports.
"This country has gone to the dogs," said Shazia Shaheen, coordinator for the Mumkin Alliance, a coalition of organizations that advocate for battered women.
Activists and government leaders note that sexual violence is hardly unique to Pakistan, citing widespread abuses across much of the Middle East and South Asia, including the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old New Delhi student in December that shocked India.
What makes the reports in Pakistan especially notable is that they have emerged at all, reflecting a broader awareness by victims and the news media.
Within hours, they were dead, their bodies left face down along a swampy canal after they were raped and shot multiple times, the medical examiner reported. By the next morning, their deaths were news across Pakistan, the latest in
a grisly stream of sexual attacks on minors.
"They were identified by their clothes," Muhammad Nazir, the victims' uncle, said in an interview. "All we know for sure: They went from their house to school, and they were murdered."
For generations, rape was a taboo subject in this conservative Muslim society. As recently as a decade ago, the news about the 14- and 16-year-old sisters might never have traveled beyond this rural area, where rice fields stretch for miles and workers shape bricks from the spongy soil.
But thanks to a freer media and a push by child-welfare advocates to get families to report such crimes, the number of cases under investigation is rising, as is the outrage of parents, the public and advocacy groups.
"People are now reporting things, and people are now seeing children are suffering heinous, horrible crimes," said Narjis Zaidi, a human rights advocate in Islamabad.
On the same day in late September that the sisters were killed on the outskirts of Gujranwala, the body of a 13-year-old girl was found on a Karachi beach after she was raped and killed on the way to school.
A week earlier, a 5-year-old girl was raped multiple times after being kidnapped. She was then dumped outside a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan's second-largest city.
And on a single day — Sept. 20 — Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper reported on the alleged rape of a 4-year-old by his school principal in Faisalabad, and the rapes of another boy, also 4, and a 14-year-old girl. The teenager had been gang-raped by four men over two days, the newspaper reported.
Each case has brought new waves of angry mothers besieging police stations demanding public executions. In Karachi, after the rape of the 5-year-old in Lahore, schoolgirls paraded with signs displaying a noose. In Pakistan's culturally conservative northwest, female lawmakers attempted to block roads in Peshawar to protest the crime, according to media reports.
"This country has gone to the dogs," said Shazia Shaheen, coordinator for the Mumkin Alliance, a coalition of organizations that advocate for battered women.
Activists and government leaders note that sexual violence is hardly unique to Pakistan, citing widespread abuses across much of the Middle East and South Asia, including the brutal gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old New Delhi student in December that shocked India.
What makes the reports in Pakistan especially notable is that they have emerged at all, reflecting a broader awareness by victims and the news media.
No comments:
Post a Comment
you are naijah for real page