AANA Newsletter January 31,2009

ASIAN AMERICAN NETWORK AGAINST ABUSE

Newsletter

Co-Editors.
S.Ehtisham
Z.D Buttar

ANAA NEWSLETTER
First Issue JANUARY, 31, 2009

Preamble to Bye-laws


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Comments from A New Board Member
By Zahra Buttar

When I was asked to join the Board of ANAA and write a short editorial for the first newsletter, I was deeply honored.

For many, ANAA is a grass roots organization that is just getting off the ground, which may have stumbled in the past. All organizations have growing pains; yet, they all mature and continue to do productive work in their respective fields.

With a combined vision, ideas and work, ANAA can continue with your help to diversify into projects that interest members. Political activism on issues of human rights and governing are central to ANAA, yet the diversity under these two umbrellas could spur numerous projects.

As a new Board member I look forward to the challenges ahead and a bright future for ANAA. One of my main objectives is to work towards the removal of the Hudood Laws, and a public awareness of the current plight of children in Pakistan: trafficking and starvation.

I look forward to working with everyone in ANAA and its readers. I was a reader once too, before I was a member. Again, I look forward to working for ANAA, and with everyone interested in its activities.

Zahra D. Buttar

HONOR KILLING-AN OVERVIEW
By S.Ehtisham

Of all the evils spawned by the tribal/feudal society, honor killing is arguably the most heinous.
Apologists try to equate it with “crime of passion” but crimes of passion are abrupt, unmediated, and impulsive acts of violence committed by persons who, in their own lights, have come face to face with an incident wholly repulsive and unacceptable, and who technically and for the duration of the act, are insane and incapable of self-control. One well known and illustrative example is that of an Indian Naval officer, Commander Nanavati who some thirty years ago went to his apartment, found his wife and her paramour in conjugal embrace, shot both of them, went out, accosted a traffic policeman, confessed to the killing and demanded to be arrested. The policeman demurred, he could not arrest an officer, so he took over directing the traffic, sent the policeman to fetch a police inspector who arrived in due course, and arrested him.
I have not been able to find as striking or so well documented example of genuine Honor killing in Pakistan as this one, though stories of enraged, out of control, husbands, fathers, and brothers abound. Murder of a “guilty” female is reported about once a month in Pakistani newspapers, though according to reliable statistics it occurs, on the average three times a day.
The usual honor killings in the tribe and clan ridden Pakistan, on the other hand are in most cases deliberate, well planned and premeditated acts, when a relative of a female kills her ostensibly to uphold his honor, though it is well established that in most cases the overriding motive is monetary/property loss entailed in giving away a female out of tribe, biraderi etc.
The practice is a relic of the times when law and order was a matter of tribal code
(A recent variant is sanctioning gang rape of a woman for alleged insult to a member of a powerful family by a member of “low” family, for example the recent Mukhtaran Mai case in Pakistan) and the British on assuming control, and with a view to pacifying the natives and minimizing opposition to their over lordship, incorporated honor killing in their jurisprudence, even though it was repugnant to their code of justice and fair play. But they imposed very stringent conditions viz sexual activity was actually observed, the perpetrator confessed, had an otherwise upright character, had blood/marriage relation with the girl and reported to the police immediately. Under British rule it was a rare incident. The perpetrator would not be sentenced to death but there would be a long jail sentence and social sanctions as well.
But above all, the crime was deemed to have been committed against the state in contravention of law and not a simple private affair.
Qisas (eye for an eye) and Diyat (blood money) as part of Hudood laws were promulgated as Presidential Ordnance, not requiring parliamentary assent, by General Zia, the military dictator of Pakistan from 1977 to 1988, are closely related relics of pre Islamic societies, where the concept of these offences being family affairs, was accepted. Islam made these violations of law crimes against the state (though clerics in their role of props of the ruling class generally look the other way or even support the practice). Since the departure of the British and with them fear of the law and judicial procedures and especially since the dark days of Zia Ul Haq, women have been relegated of to a third class status.
This intolerant theology was invented over a hundred of years after the prophet of Islam (PBUH) at the behest of Abbasid Caliphs, and revived in eighteenth century by a person by the name of Abdul Wahab, with whom the progenitor of the Saudi royal clan had signed a compact that the clan chief would look after the worldly affairs and Godly ones would be assigned to Wahab.
It did not get any where till the successors of the clan chief on the one hand and those of Wahab on the other got together to fight with the “infidel” British and the French against fellow Muslims the Turks. The house of Ibn e Saud utilized the fanatics as a weapon against their local rival, Shareef the ruler of Mecca who claimed descent from the prophet of Islam, wholly repugnant to the spirit and word of Islam. The British had promised Hejaz to Shareef but gave it instead to Saud and left the former with consolation prizes of Iraq and Jordan.
Pakistan inherited a tolerant version of Islam. I recall from my childhood that we shunned extremists and socialized with non-Muslims. Over the following several decades, as the leaders failed to come up to expectations, social services deteriorated, the ruling clique led the country down the disastrous path of wars, military rule, subservience to foreign interests, curtailment of expenditure on nation building, widening divide between the rich and the poor and finally civil war and loss of half of the country. Orthodoxy took hold of the imagination of people in the country. Bhutto pledged an egalitarian society, but ended up by rejuvenating his feudal class. Zia ul Haq hammered the final nail into the coffin of liberal Pakistan.
Feudal lords have ruled Pakistan even since its inception; all levers of power, Army, Civil service, Mullahs and Press have been under their control. Army is the most effective tool of feudal society as it has brute power and can ignore with contempt the law of the land. Other components of the evil quad (Feudals, Army, Civil service, and Mullah) willingly cooperate. Civil servants and judges supinely obey the army. (The stand taken by CJ Iftikhar Choudhury is the sole exception, was letdown by the lawyer’s movement leader Aitzaz Ahsan, but that is another discussion). Expression of opinion is prohibited and all coercive apparatus of state is used to crush opposition. Education is discouraged and whatever little is allowed, is subverted by distortion of curricula. Honor killing is a made to measure cover for them.
If Pakistan were encumbered only with the problem of fanaticism and relics of the colonial times, it would not be so bad. To compound the misery uncontrolled growth of population was allowed in the name of religion. West Pakistan (now the only Pakistan) had a population of 35 million in 1947. Now it is 170 million and growing at over three percent per year. Even if the government functioned honestly, sincerely and efficiently (which admittedly it does not) no innovation in methods of production could cope with the immense increase in the number of mouths to feed. Health, education, nutrition, physical and mental development continue to deteriorate. Human sub-species incapable of protest is being created.
In any case, few in Pakistan have the time, inclination, means or education to think, read books, and analyzes the machinations of the “evil quad”. Zia literally ignored unfavorable articles in “Dawn” and is believed to have said that the reader ship of the newspaper was only 40,000 (45,000 on Friday) and these 40-45,000 had their interest linked with the ruling Junta.
There are no doubt valiant voices in the country and among expatriates (such as AANA, Asian American network against Abuse, and as shown by the recent mass protests and results of elections in Pakistan), but they are akin to straws in the wind. All conferences, seminars, resolutions and press notes in effect and in substance are irrelevant. They look to the west specially USA for putting pressure on Pakistani authorities to respect human rights and law. But the west is not interested in human rights in third world countries. They supported Taliban in Afghanistan where the fanatics were perpetrating the worst crimes against the Afghans.
A total structural change in society is needed. It would be tantamount to a revolution. Revolutions are historically indigenous and cannot be imported or imposed from outside.
Following is a summary of the report of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International recommendations, and the protection and empowerment of women act 2003, presented to Pakistan National Assembly, presented with a fond hope that it will stimulate some minds and goad them to initiate the struggle against the evil quad.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
Honor killings 1998 to 2002 1464 (married 659- unmarried 534)

Amnesty International Recommendations
Review criminal laws to ensure equality before law and equal protection of law to women.
Make domestic violence in all its manifestations a criminal offence.
Make sale of women and girls or giving women in marriage against financial considerations a criminal offence.
Under take wide-ranging awareness programs.
Provide gender-sensitization training to law enforcement and judicial personnel.
Ensure that human rights activists, lawyers, and women’s rights activists can pursue their legitimate activities with out harassment

The 2003 “Act”
Government to ensure equal participation of women in all walks of life
Discrimination in pay on basis of gender is prohibited.
Domestic violence and honor killing to be punishable in the same manner as personal injury or culpable homicide.
Every woman shall be entitled to marry a person of her choice.
At least one third of seats on Islamic Ideology Council and other government commissions be reserved for women.
Separate/independent enclosures in jail for women controlled by female police.









BEYOND HONOR 1
By Tahira Khan

The author is a young lady from Pakistan, currently teaching at a university in the USA. Unlike the usual descriptive works on HR and violations of women in societies in the East and the West, she has presented a well researched scientific and analytical work.
The book deserves a detailed commentary which could enlighten concerned and compassionate persons who do not have time to read the whole book.
THE QUESTION
Why violence against women?
She goes on to dwell on how to define, explain and do something about it.
Violence against women has many ugly faces. It has been a universal phenomenon in the East and the West. In the West it has been identified during the last two decades and measures taken against it. Whether they have been successful it is too early to say.
In the East and Africa identification of the problem has just begun in the last decade and little by way of effective measures against it has been done about.
Wife beating, marital and other rape, sale of women, bride burning, genital mutilation (nose slashing in Pakistan), forced and child marriage and coercion and finally murder of women in name of honor.
Sufficient documentation exists to define, conceptualize and analyze such violence. Attempt is made in the study to ascertain the historical roots of repression of women and especially honor-passion related murders. Historical materialist approach is used as a tool for analysis.
WOMEN'S SUBORDINATION
There are two major schools of thought which purport to explain women's subordination.
a) Idealist holds that inferior status of women is natural , trans-historical and immutable. Conditions of women can be rectified by demanding protection from the state, ignoring the fact that state itself is patriarchal. It supports equality, liberty and freedom with out looking at the material and economic roots of oppression. At the family level again women are exhorted to struggle with out questioning the material basis of the institution.
b) Materialist theory holds that oppression of women is social, historical and alterable phenomenon. Family institutions are shaped by ownership of private property and the mode of production. Social norms, traditions, religious dictates and imagery have all been developed out of material basis and economic system of societies.
There has always been a material-concrete reality behind social-religious constructs of terms and language. Male sperm as seed and female womb as cultivating field as used in Judaic and Islamic sources is related to prevalent mode of production. Quran says "your wives are as a tithe unto you. So approach your tithe when and how you will" (Q 2:223) is in an agricultural context.
Honor revolves around sexuality of women. "Why is the womb of the woman the repository of man's honor? An attempt is made to answer the question.
MATERIALIST EXPLANATION OF VIOLENCE.
Engels wrote that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc.
Materialist approach invites the oppressed to discover the material nature of their subordination. It explains the phenomenon of female oppression at two levels: personal and structural. When and why the honor/shame code constructed around female sexuality and why is it enforced by the social system? All social and intellectual relations can be explained by analyzing the material conditions of a particular society. Material changes in world history have changed the role and status of women. surplus value gave birth to private property which accumulated in the hands of men. That raised concerns about inheritance rules and efforts to assure paternity. That led to monogamy (and end of polyandry) and lax sexual relations for the husband.
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO WOMEN'S OPPRESSION
Materialist theory is applicable to both personal and familial violence. In one case violence can be traced to an individual. In the other one violence is built into the structure of society (John Gaitlung in journal of Peace Research). Personal violence is manifest, direct and visible. Structural violence is indirect and invisible and can not be registered. Cases of structural violence can be traced back to personal violence in prehistory.( Gaiitlung). He later added cultural violence “culture used to legitimize violence". There is a causal relationship between the three kinds of violence.
Structure and culture make unequal laws for men and women and have material foundations. Honor/Passion crimes are tri-dimensional and involve all the three actors-personal, familial and cultural. Money and sex are directly linked. Violence is committed by individuals facilitated by religious, legal, soc ail and political institutions. Men were divided into Free-Slave, rich and poor. Women on the other hand into attached ( wife, sister, daughter) and unattached Concubine and prostitutes). I saw a video on the history channel that the prophet Lot when besieged by his towns people to surrender two male companions, offered his young virgin daughters instead. Offer of girls to settle conflicts is an ancient custom. Mercifully in this case God did not agree and rained sulfur and fire on the besiegers.
Part one of the book reviews literature and asks why such violence persists. Part two attempts to answer the question through a materialist approach.
HONOR/PASSION CRIMES, KINDS AND CONTEXT
Such crimes have always taken place, but were reported from 1970ies on in Mediterranean and Latin American countries. They hit the headlines in Pakistan in 1993. Till the 1990ies the murder of women by male relatives was not characterized as honor/passion crimes. Mazhar H Khan (1972 Purdah and polygamy) is the earliest research. He traces the historical roots of violence against women among the Turkish tribes before and after the advent of Islam and focuses on changes in material forces and economic system.. He also mentions the practice of such crimes in Muslims of South Asia. He also researched son-preference. How female fetuses are aborted and female infants killed (Amartya Sen More than a 100 million women are missing in Asia 1990).
A Mr Anwar Pirzado wrote in daily Star Karachi "We are husbands and strong. They are women and weak. We can have more than one wife. They can not have more than one husband. We sometimes kill them for looking beyond chardiwari-outside home." Nafisa Shah wrote about Karo Kari (killing dishonored women-news line 1993). She blamed the feudalist and tribal system. Recently Dr. Shazia Khalid was raped 9n Sui, Baluchistan, Pakistan allegedly by army officers. She was declared Kari by her husband's grandfather who wanted her killed. In spite of more frequent reporting a curtain of silence still hides such crimes in the country.
Patriarchal and misogynist customs and religious practices haven blamed for honor-passion crimes. Very rarely have the forces that shaped such customs been analyzed.
Fatima Mernissi (Beyond the veil 1975) explains the relationship between money and female sexuality. Nawal El Saadavi (1980 The hidden face of eve) an Egyptian scholar states that “a man's honor remains safe as long as the female members of the family keep their hymens intact-pre-marriage I suppose).
Lama Abu-Odeh an Arab scholar emphasizes the anthropological and socio-legal implication of such crimes in Arab society and makes a clear distinction between honor and passion crimes.
1999 saw coverage of honor-passion crimes by international media-BBC, CNN, NBC, NY Times, Washington Post and guardian and an impression was left that these crimes occurred only in Muslim countries. 90 % of such crimes are reported from Muslim countries. Muslims are emotionally hurt by the coverage, do not have strong arguments to refute such reports and are by and large unaware of the occurrence of such crimes. Non Muslims tend to attribute the crimes to "veiled, segregated, uneducated and oppressed majority of Muslim women. Muslims assert that it has nothing to do with Islam.
Honor related crimes occur across class, caste and ethnic groups among Muslims. The most "celebrated" case was that of "death of a princess" a BBC documentary of the execution of a Saudi princess and her lover, with a trial in Shariah court as ordained by Islam. CNN reported on how a brother stabbed his "fallen" sister to death and invited villagers to watch the murder.
Even among educated families a bride is expected to be a virgin. Gynecologists perform surgical restoration of hymen. Girls are sometimes killed on mere suspicion of loss of virginity.95 % of girls killed in Jordan had no sexual relations at all.
Numbers of killings reported are no where near the actual number.
Rim Zahara of Syria (Women's international net 24 B 1999) highlights the dual standards of sexuality for men and women in Syria. The practice of hymen repair is also common in Iraq. In Turkey honor killers are very highly regarded in prison. In the penal code bodies and sexuality belongs to their husbands, families and communities.
In Iran situation has worsened since the advent of theocratic state in 1979.
ABC night line Feb 16/1999 elicited this reaction from an American " I saw the true face of Islam..."Muslim reaction to such remarks is very bitter.
In March 2000 BBC aired a documentary on honor killings and followed up with interviews with Muslims. The general impression by interviewees was that honor killing was permissible in Islam ( Moulvi Ghafoor Naib-deputy Amir of Jamaat Islami the leading religious party of Pakistan told a press conference that Honor killing was Islamic). People of Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey are generally very hostile to HR workers, journalists and lawyers for daring to expose such crimes (in the USA expatriate community behaves much in the same way) calling the activists as agents of Judeo-Christian forces.
MUSLIM WOMEN FACING VIOLENCE IN NON-MUSLIM COUNTRIES.
Daughters and sisters in European countries have been murdered for wanting to marry a man of their choice and for rejecting arranged marriages. ( one subterfuge is to take girls to "home countries" for a visit and forcing them to marry in the clan. Neighbors, police and administration aid and abet the perpetrators. Examples are numerous.
THOSE WHO DARE TO EXPOSE
Informants prefer to remain anonymous. (rape is rampant in jails, police stations, military hospitals, feudal, tribal chief's houses in Pakistan). Survivors of outrages did not want to mention their real names.
Naval El Sadawi a physician of Egypt was jailed for her research. Fatima Mernissi a social scientist from morocco was physically assaulted by a male "scholar" from Pakistan in a conference in Malaysia. Ayaan Hirsi, a Somali born Dutch parliamentarian had to go into hiding after murder of Van Gogh the film maker's movie "submission" on the abuse of Muslim women. She had written the script.
To be continued


Saturday, September 20th 8:30 a.m. PST
By Zahra Buttar
My 'reserved' table at the Chinese restaurant in the Marriott Hotel (Islamabad) was number 17. I used to go every Saturday night. Besides that I used to frequent the place just for coffee in the late, late night when I couldn't sleep as I lived a short six blocks away in E/7.
On the way to my office this morning, I started crying in the car when I heard the news from the BBC reporting from Islamabad. I thought of the doorman who had worked there ‘forever’ and all the other staff, their families, the car park men, the drivers, and all the regulars (the workers) who live in and around the hotel and work to support families in the villages and in the slums of Pindi.
I have been to many Iftar dinners at the Marriott as they are out on the lawn in the back with the tents and the place is usually packed, especially during Ramadan and particularly on Saturday evenings. Later, as I saw the hotel burning I also thought of the Hashwani's, the owners. They supported many charitable organizations that no one else would touch. Decadent people maybe, but always willing to help with charity work for the battered women, aids patients, Christian colony and a few other marginalized taboo groups in society.
My heart goes out to them and to all those killed and injured. I then remembered my own experience of having to go to PIMS, the Pakistan Institute of ‘Medical Science’. I had more pity for those injured and realized that many more would die just by being taken to PIMS; only the paying elite go to Shifa Hospital, where I was later transferred to.
An entire city, not having even the beginning facilities to handle any emergency, let alone a catastrophe of this scale. The frightening part, calling friends in Islamabad to ask if everyone was all right, knowing many go to the Iftar at Marriott on Saturday night with family, relatives and friends.

Saturday: November 1, 2008
Now, six weeks later, friends have repaired windows, stitches have been removed, but life has not returned to normal in Islamabad. Friends say that bombings have increased in and around the town. Barbed wire is everywhere and security checks are numerous. Many of the foreign missions have reduced staff or closed, and the remnants of the International School barely remain with fewer students now than ever before. Security is more of an issue, but the Pakistan Parliament meets, jirga trials continue and Zardari appoints ministers who advocate burying females alive.
In Pakistan the problems of women and children have increased substantially. It is now reported by Pakistani aid agencies that more people are requiring subsidized naan at public ovens. Children are also being left on the streets to starve, due to high inflation, lack of employment and in some places lack of food stocks in the country. Through my twenty five years in Pakistan, children were never left to starve; but now I have desperate women telling me that they cannot feed one or two of their children, and they are beginning to sell their infants or leave them with ‘individuals’.
Women and children are powerless non-entities in Pakistan whereby they have few legal or civil rights. As I sift through the argument presented by nationalist and religious scholars concerning modern/western/feminist versus Islam/traditional/anti-western to continue the subjugation of women and children, it is purely in their self-interest and that of the State to continue this binary.
The argument is founded and secured from two power bases: patriarchal authority and religious authority sanctioned by the State. Both sources of power work with the blessing of the state and from those who wield power for the discourse of nationalism with unchallenged authority. This volatile mix has co-opted the power from any other dialogue in the country to be voiced: thereby opposition voices to this religious/patriarchal power base being labeled modern/western/non-Islamic. Currently, we may also add a new term, that of being a traitor, or non-nationalist, yet another binary. As the power of the state works to disrupt any other ‘agency’ except its own, what then constitutes transformative and critical work?
ANAA has a role in this transformative work. Through its continued role as public advocate for those who have no voice; newsletters, blogs, email announcements, letters, and legislation are informative and instrumental in getting a voice heard in the age of technology.
Having Amna in Lahore at the Assembly is another point of entry to advocacy. Through continuing contacts with those small groups of individuals ‘on the ground’, and affected daily by those who currently wield power, both sides can understand that there is an outside force or agency that is challenging the current corrupt discourse. The resourcefulness and tenacity of ANAA continues and proliferates in multiple localities as we plot our continued survival, and the survival of our dear Pakistan, especially its women and children. Therefore, ANAA has a vital role in advocacy and agency through the dissemination of information as a first step. Information transforms into positions and through this legislation and other programs can be developed to invoke change. Discourse can change to accomplish goals and agendas constituting advantageous practices of power for the majority only when voices are allowed to function and invoke change. ANAA is the voice and action towards this change.


What would Benazir do?
By Rafia Zakaria
Saturday, November 22, 2008


Three hundred and thirty one days have passed since the death of Benazir Bhutto at the hands of a suicide bomber, and if anyone wondered how long it would take her heirs to forget her legacy, the answer is before us

When President Asif Zardari addressed the UN General Assembly a few months ago, he held aloft a picture of his slain wife as a testament to the price he and the Pakistani nation have paid in the war on terror. The political legacy of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has reverberated through this last year, playing no small role in the election of her party, and ultimately of her husband to the Presidency.

For the women of Pakistan, however, the death of Benazir Bhutto has meant a crude and ruthless relegation to a forgotten recess of politics. While the new PPP government may well have been elected based on the legacy of an incredible woman, it has done scant little to honour it. Ministers have been appointed and recommendations duly rejected without the slightest concern for the forgotten and ignored constituency of Pakistani citizens. Honour killings, acid attacks and sexual assaults on women have increased rapidly and been summarily ignored by a government that was elected because of the woman who once led them.

One most recent example is the burgeoning controversy over recommendations made by the Council of Islamic Ideology to reform Pakistan’s inegalitarian divorce laws to bring them in accordance with Islamic principles. According to the Council’s report presented this past weekend to President Zardari, current law needs to be changed to require the registration of the first pronouncement of talaq (divorce) with following pronouncements only to be given effect if the former requirement is met.

The Council also recommends that women also be given the right to divorce by adding a clause to=2 0the nikahnama that would allow them to petition courts for divorce. The resultant divorce would automatically take effect within 90 days if the husband fails to oblige. In addition, the Council recommended, a man entering into marriage would be required to declare all his assets and financial liabilities as well as previous marriages.

The Council’s recommendations are hardly revolutionary, it’s not like it has taken the step of recommending that a husband repudiate polygamy (something suggested by the Islamic Institute of Britain in a recent report penned by Islamic scholars there) nor has it tried to give women the ability to divorce their husbands by making three verbal pronouncements as men are able to do. No, instead the Council has recommended to this government, one elected on the basis of a woman’s legacy, to give Pakistani women the ability to obtain a divorce under certain conditions — the basic right to decide her own destiny.

And yet this paltry revision, which would provide more in symbolism (let’s not forget our aging debilitated court system’s limited ability to actually deliver on legal reform), is too much for this government to support. Mere days since the recommendations were presented to President Zardari, widower of a woman who sacrificed her life for the nation, government ministers had declare their opposition to the proposed revisions.

It was no surprise that hard-line groups and clerics like Mufti Munibur Rehman decried the recommendations as20soon as they were presented, the Mufti accusing the government of ‘creating a new sharia’.

What was surprising and heartrending, before even the first anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s death, was that the religious affairs minister, selected by a government elected on Bhutto’s political legacy, announced that “the government does not support the Council’s recommendations and they should be sent back for further review”.

Three hundred and thirty one days have passed since the death of Benazir Bhutto at the hands of a suicide bomber, and if anyone wondered how long it would take her heirs to forget her legacy, the answer is before us.

As a woman, Benazir Bhutto fought to make her place in the echelons of governance in a country where women are routinely treated like chattel. Yet in a despicable reversal, men who are active and quite literal participants in such denigration have been elevated to the highest ranks in the current Administration. Notable among them is the notorious Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, now minister of education, who ordered the ‘payment’ of five minor girls, aged 2-5, as compensation to settle a feud between two warring tribes. Proof of his involvement has been provided by the Women’s Action Forum, which has documentary evidence substantiating his role.

If the induction of Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani was not enough of a slap in the face of Pakistani women, the appointment of Israrullah Zehri as the minister for p ostal services adds further credence to the government’s abandonment of Bhutto’s legacy.

Zehri, as is now well known, defended the practice of burying women alive in the name of honour as a cultural value that deserves protection. These comments were made in public mere days after the grotesque incident, which implicated the brother of yet another sitting provincial minister from the PPP, Sadiq Umrani, who has also continued to retain the party membership.

It is to this cast of misogynistic, patriarchal and ruthless men that the legacy of a woman who fought and ultimately lost her life for this country has been entrusted. The future of the women and girls of Pakistan, who merely a year ago had hoped to see a woman at the helm of their country, has quite unceremoniously thus been reduced to a farce through this litany of failures: the appointment of men with an avowed disregard and even hatred for women and this resolute failure to support even the most meagre of changes that would promise uplift to Pakistan’s women.

On viewing the cabinet selected to uphold the legacy of a woman who by her very existence flouted patriarchy, Iqbal Haider, Co-Chairman of the Human Rights Commission, said, “Had Benazir Bhutto been alive, she would never have allowed this”.

What would Benazir Bhutto have done if she were alive today? At least with regard to women, it seems it’s a question that has never been asked by the very administration elected in her name.

Rafia Zakaria is an attorney living in the United States where she teaches courses on Constitutional Law and Political Philosophy. She can be contacted at rafia.zakaria@gmail.com