Awakening by Rachel B. Vogelstein

Author:Rachel B. Vogelstein [Rachel B. Vogelstein and Meighan Stone]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2021-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

When we spoke in September 2020, Shiza and Hamna were reeling from two horrific gang-rape cases that had shaken women across the country, leading to street protests. On September 4, a five-year-old girl in Karachi was on her way to buy cookies at a shop when she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Her small, lifeless body was found two days later, burned. Just five days later, when a Lahore mother of three ran out of gas on a motorway, she was robbed and gang-raped in front of her children. The police later confirmed that one of her attackers was a serial rapist. But the Lahore police chief, Muhammad Umar Sheikh, blamed the woman for her own assault, faulting her for not making sure her car had enough fuel and asking why she was out so late at night without a male companion. One of Pakistan’s most well-known religious clerics, Maulana Tariq Jameel, posted a “condemnation” video online, blaming not the attackers but coeducation of men and women for causing such moral degradation.36

For Pakistani women, it was too much. Social media exploded with outraged posts using the hashtag #motorwayincident and calling for the police chief’s removal. Shireen Mazari, Pakistan’s federal minister for human rights, posted her own indictment on Twitter: “For an officer to effectively blame a woman for being gang raped by saying she should have taken the GT [Grand Truck] Road or question as to why she went out in the night with her children is unacceptable and have taken up this issue. Nothing can ever rationalise the crime of rape. That’s it.”37

When victims are blamed for their own brutal assaults, it’s not a surprise that women hesitate to report. Discussing the Lahore case, Shiza said, “We know from the survivor that her first concern was she didn’t even want to file a police report. She kept repeatedly requesting the police to keep her identity hidden.” She added that social media had given women who were afraid of victim shaming more safety. “It’s been a big game changer, because Pakistan is a very conservative society and the backlash and the fallout for the survivor is huge. So the very fact that social media offers them anonymity is the first step.”

Hamna, who now works as a freelance writer and has been organizing online panels to talk about how to stop rape culture in Pakistan, said she hoped outrage on social media would result in concrete change. “I don’t even think that we’re talking about massive changes in legislation, because rape is a crime in Pakistan. Sexual harassment is a crime in Pakistan. Sexual assault is a crime in Pakistan. Domestic abuse is a crime in Pakistan,” she said pointedly. “What I think needs to change is addressing corruption and bias and misogyny, from the regular police officer in the street to the inspector general of police.”

In response to the September attacks and public outrage, Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, called for harsher punishments for rapists, including public hanging and chemical or physical castration.

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