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Uproar over honour killings

ISLAMABAD: Following a national outcry, the government scrambled on Monday to arrest four people suspected of involvement in burying five women alive in Balochistan and exhumed two bodies for investigations.

The Senate, Parliament’s Upper House, thoroughly embarrassed by two of its veteran members, who last week put up a staunch defence of the “honour killings” as a “tribal tradition,” also sought to make amends.

The House had a lengthy discussion on the issue and passed a resolution condemning the burial, demanding that those who behind the crime should be tried and punished.

The five women belonged to the Umrani tribe. Among them, three were teenagers who wanted to marry men of their choice. The two other women were the mother of one girl and an aunt, who supported the decision of the girls.

According to a report by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the women were abducted by a group of men belonging to the Umrani tribe and taken to a remote spot in Jaferabad in eastern Balochistan.

There, the men first sprayed bullets at the teenagers, and while they were still breathing, are reported to have pushed their bodies into a ditch and started throwing mud and stones at them. When the two older women protested, they were pushed into the ditch too and buried with the others.

Though the incident happened on July 14, a case was registered only on Monday morning. The AHRC and newspaper reports alleged the police did not take note of the killings because the brother of a provincial Minister, a member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was involved.

The killings came to light only after a newspaper published details last week. However, Raza Rabbani, leader of the Senate and a senior PPP leader, vehemently denied on the floor of the House that the brother of any Minister from his party was involved in the killings.

Following the registration of the case, the police picked up four men, including a cousin of one of the victims as prime suspects in the killing. The bodies of two of the victims have been exhumed for a post-mortem.

Last Friday, when Yasmin Shah, a Pakistan Muslim League (Q) Senator, raised the issue in the Senate, Mir Israrullah Zehri, a Senator from Balochistan, cut her short by saying what had happened was “within tribal traditions” and the House should not make an issue of it.

The Deputy Chairman of the Senate, Jan Jamali, who was the acting Chair, supported Mr. Zehri, and said as a member of a neighbouring tribe, he would not comment on traditions of other tribes, but asked Ms. Shah to visit Balochistan to apprise herself of the customs there before raising such issues in the House. The widely reported remarks and the case itself have embarrassed the PPP, which prides itself as a champion of women’s rights in Pakistan.

The Women’s Action Forum (WAF) of Pakistan demanded in a statement that in view of the PPP’s “traditional pro-women’s stand,” Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari make public statements strongly condemning both the brutal killings as well as the defence of customary laws and jirgas in Parliament by a Senator and the subsequent defence of that Senator by the acting Chairman of the Senate.

The WAF demanded the case be moved to Islamabad for hearing “in order to ensure an impartial investigation by the State, free of political pressures, and an impartial judgement providing justice to the women of Pakistan.”

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