quote:

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(Islamabad) A village woman who won international praise for speaking publicly about her gang rape will have her appeal heard in Pakistan's highest court this week against five of her alleged attackers who were acquitted, lawyers said Sunday.

Mukhtar Mai, 36, was assaulted in June 2002 on orders of a village council in retaliation for her brother's alleged affair with another woman.

Six men were later sentenced to death over the attack, and eight others acquitted. But in March the High Court in eastern Punjab province - where Mai's village is located - overturned the convictions of five of the men, and reduced the death sentence of the sixth to life in prison, citing a lack of evidence.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a lawyer for Mai, said the Supreme Court will begin hearings Monday to set aside the High Court ruling.

---

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]

He and others have been openly pressuring Bush to pressure Musharraf, which is a good thing and has probably saved her life -- recently, eg, she was taken into custody by security people and disappeared briefly, but Kristof and others immediately protested loudly and urgently.

quote:

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In June 2002, a council of elders ordered Mai to be gang-raped as punishment because her 12-year-old brother had allegedly been involved in an affair with a woman, offending members of her powerful clan.

---

I don't know whether it is the ancient clan culture itself that produces these outrages or whether that culture has been deformed by war and outsider opportunism, as in Afghanistan.

There was a thread started weeks ago which attracted ONE response (until my own).

I put a lot of time into searching for links and my post isn't all that well organised but there are a GAZILLION links on her own(? supporters?) website and other sources.

Babblers had me really wondering about the collective yawn the thread seemed to elicit.

If you want to read more and check some of the links, it's here:

quote:

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Originally posted by VanLuke:
Hephaestion

Babblers had me really wondering about the collective yawn the thread seemed to elicit.

[/URL]

---

quote:

---

I hope that her Western supporters can remain modest enough to remember to follow her lead, not usurp her leadership in a misguided attempt to help.

---

Word. And I really hope the Pakistan government finally gives her passport back so she can come here and speak to North Americans, and the media, directly.

It's a huge relief that Ms. Mai's international supporters, including Kristof, were able to put enough pressure on the Pakistani government to release her.

Still, there was something about Kristof's story that made me a little uncomfortable ... I think it was the faint sheen of self-satisfaction I detect in Kristof's articles. There's something about his fascination with sexual exploitation of foreign women -- sex trafficking in East Asia, rape in Darfur, judicially sanctioned rape in Pakistan, and that's just the past 6 months -- that profoundly turns me off, and I'm not good at articulating why.

Fortunately, Professor Leti Volpp, in a letter to the editor of the NYT, put it much better than I could:

quote:

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Mr. Kristof laments the fact that in Pakistan, one woman is raped every two hours. In the United States, with a population less than twice the size of Pakistan, F.B.I. statistics indicate that one woman is estimated to be raped every six minutes.

When we focus on what are assumed to be cultural or religious sources of gendered violence, we often fail to look in the mirror. We should take seriously the problem of rape in both nations.

---

I think this woman is a real hero! A "lower class" woman who didn't oblige the bastards by killing herself as most rape victims do in that country because of their laws and attitudes.

With a bit of western help she took on Musharraf [spell?] and for the time being she is winning. Not to speak of her selflessness in spending the money she could have used herself for a school. (Check out some of the links on her support website if you haven't already done so.)

Maybe what turns you off about Kristof also explains the relative silence on this board. But I sure hope not and with all the threads about "design vaginas", "anus bleaching" and such -which REALLY turn me off- on babble I'd find this hard to understand.

Btw Kristof writes about a lot more than just the subjects you mentioned. He's a writer I've been reading regularly for a long time . Selling blood in China and AIDS, global warming and oil exploration in Alaska are but 2 examples. He has also written several pieces highly critical (by NYT standards) of the Iraq war.

Tell me though if you can, who is covering such atrocities? Check out how many women in Pakistan get killed or raped and how most of the latter kill themselves because of the shame of being raped. Man does THAT make me angry. You find some numbers among the links on her support site I linked to in the original thread about this subject.

Unpleasant as this subject is you surely don't suggest we all turn the other way.

And this woman had the courage of carrying on with her life and looking after others with the money she got for her suffering!

I repeat: She is a real hero!

Edited to correct a couple of typos

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

You must be confusing it with another case because it was reported for the first time only a couple of weeks ago.

Edited to add:

Maybe I should have said that I only read about it a couple of weeks ago. However, I check google news every day and never came across a link mentioning it.

I read about it in Kristof's first column about the subject. However the rape happened in 2002 and maybe some other babblers started another thread way back.

The court record is here:
http://tinyurl.com/bv6em

Further edit:
Maybe you are right and I'm wrong. The court record speaks of a BBC report and an article in Time.

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

http://tinyurl.com/yvz5l

edited to add a short quote to show that this is far from being over:

quote:

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The State Department has been reasonably outspoken on Mukhtaran’s case, and it emerges that Condi Rice called the Pakistani foreign minister to tell him to stop beating up on Mukhtaran. Good for her. Problem is he said, “she’s free to travel” – that’s a lie – and Condi apparently said, “What a relief.”

---

[ 27 June 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

It's also very scary, in the sense that we hear about this and wonder why our cultural experience has evolved so differently - yet at the same time, rape does occur here. What makes it different is our collective condemnation of the very idea of rape.

quote:

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Originally posted by Hailey:
Perhaps people haven't commented because what reply is adequate to such horror?

---

quote:

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Ms. Mai was planning to go to the United States on the invitation of a human rights group, but the government put her name on an exit control list -- a roster of people banned from travelling abroad.

During a visit to New Zealand earlier this month, President General Pervez Musharraf said he ordered the ban to prevent Ms. Mai bad mouthing Pakistan.

---

quote:

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The court has ordered 14 men - the five acquitted by the Lahore court, a sixth man whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by that court and another eight men acquitted at the original trial - be held in custody.

---

quote:

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at the same time, rape does occur here. What makes it different is our collective condemnation of the very idea of rape.

Why isn't that the case in all cultures?

---

I think it was even more recently that the courts and legislatures decided that a man could not argue that a woman had "consented" to sex because of the way she was dressed, or because she was alone with him, or let him kiss her, or she was drunk, or because she wasn't a virgin, or because Native girls, or black girls, or girls from her side of the tracks are easy, or because she was too scared to fight back, or because she didn't fight back hard enough. And even today, judges and juries still acquit men based on these "rape myths", even though these myths have been discredited by the Supreme Court.

But those changes didn't happen because North American "culture" was so woman-friendly. It happened because women of our culture fought to change the predominant cultural views of what it was OK for men to do to women.

Everywhere that we see horrible human rights abuses committed against women, we also see women of that culture fighting against those practices, for women's dignity and safety, equality, humanity and human rights, against powerful men who say "This is what our culture is."

To me, the question isn't "What's wrong with Pakistani culture that this is allowed?" so much as "What can we do to help Pakistani women who are trying to change these awful practices?"

P.S. VanLuke, no, I don't think Kristof should stop writing about these things, I'm just saying his sensationalism turns me off. And absolutely, Mai is an awe-inspiring hero.

[ 28 June 2005: Message edited by: puzzlic ]

quote:

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but what other insane court rulings do they have?

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I wonder if there are any where a woman "transgresses" and a man gets punished for it? Somehow I doubt it.

quote:

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But those changes didn't happen because North American "culture" was so woman-friendly. It happened because women of our culture fought to change the predominant cultural views of what it was OK for men to do to women.

Everywhere that we see horrible human rights abuses committed against women, we also see women of that culture fighting against those practices, for women's dignity and safety, equality, humanity and human rights, against powerful men who say "This is what our culture is."

To me, the question isn't "What's wrong with Pakistani culture that this is allowed?" so much as "What can we do to help Pakistani women who are trying to change these awful practices?"

---

puzzlic, I'll trade you a WORD for that.

A lot of North Americans have really short memories, eh?

Obviously, what is making puzzlic and me and a few others uncomfortable about this discussion is the way this horror might be seized on, cynically, opportunistically, by people already determined to take Mai's culture apart in ways that Mai herself might not want.

Why are we worried about that? Because other women like Mai have warned us off that kind of stupidity in the past. See the RAWA website (how many times have we linked to it?).

Support means support -- ie, it means following those who need our (privileged, usually because we have previously ripped off the vulnerable) help. It does not mean unearned smart-ass superiority.

This issue has come up again and again on babble, probably most pressingly with the horrible sentences levied on women in the north of Nigeria. Again and again, political groups there have appealed to Western supporters not to intervene in self-righteous ways, given that they have been consistently successful in saving those women without provoking confrontations we are too ignorant to understand and are furthermore at least partly responsible for in the first place.

Mr Magoo, it astounds me that you could write this:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

I wonder if there are any where a woman "transgresses" and a man gets punished for it? Somehow I doubt it.

The idea that raping a woman can be a legitimate punishment in a court of law is unthinkable. The idea that it can be meted out to an innocent party, by that same court of law, is beyond absurd.

---

In what culture, Mr Magoo, do you think that what has happened to Mai is so unusual? Name me one? How recently?

Have you ever read, Mr Magoo, of what American and Soviet soldiers did to German farm women as they encountered them at the end of WWII? Nailed to barn doors, gang-raped? You think that isn't part of your culture?

Still, I have to concede that Magoo has something of a point in that it's even worse for a court to sentence a woman to rape (for someone else's "crime") than for guards or soldiers to break the law by raping her.

Although if the lawbreaking rapists' crimes aren't punished, that impunity puts some of the responsibility on the state for permitting it. And when the US government is arguing that it can do whatever it wants to detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo without restriction by any national or international law -- then condones the torture and promotes those who allowed it -- we're getting pretty darn close to official state sanction for the crimes.

For a time, at the end of WWII, it looked as though the most powerful survivors (ie: victors) were going to commit to a rule of humane international law.

I honestly do think that some of the founders of the UN, some of the authors of its charters, and promoters like Eleanor Roosevelt really meant what they said then.

But as you observe, it is hard to believe in any such commitment any longer from the Western nations, which means that just about anyone else is justified in feeling that all bets are off, everything is permitted.

And all we're left with is squabbling about who is the worst.

quote:

---

Originally posted by puzzlic:
I guess what gets under my skin about our righteous horror at these foreign abuses is that that horror seems to make us believe there's something wrong with those people, whereas we're just fine.

---

I don't think we're 'just fine'; but on the other hand, if I had been able to choose where and when to be born as a woman, I'd choose pretty much right here, right now (so far, that is, and only from what I know of history - maybe there were times when women of all classes were supposed to have the same political and personal rights as men, but they just don't spring immediately to mind.)

The problem I have with this type of discourse is the othering that immediately kicks in. Isn't it enough to condemn these horrific actions? Why oh why go one step further and prop up and elevate one's own culture while recognizing and condemning these incidents? That to me smacks of a white supremacist mindset and I'm not using this term in a nazi kind of way. What I'm referring to is the uncritical belief, held by many, that western/european civilization is more advanced/evolved. One just has to look at the global turmoil and see that is simply not true. I think all these societies need to be radically transformed.

bell hooks, among other anti-racist theorists, talks about this othering process as derived from the western philosophy of dualistic thinking- black-white, male-female with negative and positive values attached to these categories. I'm sure skdadl can elaborate on the roots of this particular line of thinking better than me. The basic idea is that this is a component of perpetuating racism/white supremacy- defining western civ/culture in opposition to the colonized with negative and positive values added.

The quality of a woman's life in Canada is reliant on many factors including race, class, disability, immigrant or refugee status, being native to name a few. Many variations would exist in the female population of Pakistan too so it doesn't make sense to me to say that a woman is guaranteed a better life if born here without adding some qualifications.

One last thing- and I'm not directing this at anyone on this thread because having read your posts on other threads, I know this issue is something you've given thought to- but why doesn’t the mainstream media and the west apply the same level of scrutiny to the violence done to women in poorer nations through the poverty they suffer which by the way the west is complicit in. You will not see the same kind of coverage and reaction as you do in mai's story. In my mind, they are equally deserving of our attention.

quote:

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Have you ever read, Mr Magoo, of what American and Soviet soldiers did to German farm women as they encountered them at the end of WWII? Nailed to barn doors, gang-raped? You think that isn't part of your culture?

---

It's not part of my courtrooms.

Do you see any difference between the actions of individuals, and the collective laws and actions of the state?

To me it's like the difference between a culture with some homophobia and a country that openly outlaws homosexuality, jails homosexuals, etc.

Anyway, I was primarily pointing to the obvious absurdity of punishing person A for the actions of person B, as well as speculating that it's not likely ever going to happen the other way around.

There is first of all a serious practical danger when well-intentioned but condescending Westerners rush into these cases without knowing what they are doing. Again and again, such people have hurt more than helped the people they mean to "save." That message has come to us lately and very strongly from groups in Nigeria, eg, who really don't want Westerners going off half-cocked about what is happening in the northern provinces when the central government remains so amenable to neutralizing sexist and homophobic sentences levied there.

If we want to be at all helpful to any people who are oppressed in cultures very different from our own, we have to be self-critical first -- otherwise, we are still just imperialist clodhoppers. And we need to spend the time getting to know local progressives and helping them to lead. Nothing else works, not long-term.

Re how "official" predatory behaviour towards women is in Canada: oh, I suppose that there were no formal laws backing up the yahoos who raped and battered Betty Osborne to death all those years ago, or backing up THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY that covered for the murderers for decades because, of course, Osborne was just a native woman and, after all, what can you expect ...

quote:

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No, it doesn't happen here ... as much.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Could you flesh this out with an example of a court in Canada ordering a woman raped as punishment?

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For a crime SOMEONE ELSE committed, no less.

Come on, folks. I'm all for criticizing at home as much as abroad myself, but let's get real here - women haven't achieved complete equality in Canada, but certainly we can admit that women are not subject to warlords who decree their rape as a judicial punishment here, and that women have a lot more rights here than in Pakistan. Can't we? We haven't always had those rights, I agree, but let's not pretend that justice systems in Pakistan, or say, Iran or Saudi Arabia, are in any way comparable to Canada or the US when it comes to upholding the rights of women.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]

All I can do is keep repeating myself: doing "something, anything" just because we are angry is no kind of help to anyone.

quote:

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If people want to do any more than vent, then the path is clear: make contact with local progressives who can take the lead, and offer to support them -- as in support.

---

Skdadl:

I'd say that what happened in The Pas, at the time of the murder and after, is a close match to what happens in patriarchal villages world-wide.

And really, a lot of the reasons for that situation there can be laid at the feet of colonialist history. I think there are lots of people in Canada who would probably do the same type of thing in their communities if they thought they could get away with it, and if our governments didn't intervene.

Ha! periyar and skdadl both posted while I was composing mine.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]

quote:

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Actually, I can sort of see skdadl's point, about how our situations are unparallel in that there are no regions in Canada that are war-torn or as impoverished as the area in question happens to be.

---

What about elsewhere?

I find it hard to believe that war or poverty "caused" this. It may have made it possible, in a sense, but it didn't cause it. That's like saying that power blackouts "cause" looting.

You really can't imagine that?

The misogyny is present in pockets everywhere. If certain people in Canada could get away with it here, they would.

As for the court system there, they treated it as a criminal case I believe, didn't they? Just as we would here if the leaders of some sect or community pulled that crap on a woman. And many rape trials in Canada are dismissed (or convictions overturned) due to lack of evidence or lack of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Lots of guys in Canada get away with raping women.

Gee, I think I've completely switched positions here, haven't I? Anyhow, I really DO think it's a function of having a government with adequate resources to oversee the populace properly. It's also about misogyny, but that's everywhere. And people's attitudes toward women in Canada would never have changed had enough women not been able to use the bountiful resources of our government and justice system to change things.

[ 29 June 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]

If there were no Provincial Court, if the village truly was outside of the law, run by a local tyrant, no problem. But once the law and the government get involved, I don't think you can blame it all on the local tyrant, the remoteness, the fighting, etc.

quote:

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I have a hard time saying "Oh, it's really the fault of the war/poverty/colonialism/sun spots, not outright misogyny."

---

When the provincial court acquitted the rapists in the Mai case, sure, it was as misogynist as the village council ... but it's not as though Canadian judges never acquit rapists for misogynist reasons. See the decision of the majority of the Alberta Court of Appeal in the Ewanchuk ("it's not as though she was wearing a bonnet and crinolines") case, or the Saskatchewan trial court in the case a couple of years ago where a white man in his 20s sexually assaulted a 12-year-old aboriginal girl and the trial judge acquitted for some reason having to do with the judge's perception that it's common for aboriginal girls that age to have sex. Or the NWT case maybe 5 or 10 years ago when a judge acquitted a man for raping an unconscious Inuk woman because "it's common in the Inuit community, when they're drunk, for a man to see a pair of hips and help himself."

As periyar says, the status of women, and the degree to which the law protects them, often depends on their social circumstances -- in Pakistan as everywhere else. In Canada and the US, low-status women (prostitutes, aboriginal women, black women, non-virgins etc.) are far less likely to see their rapists convicted than higher-status women (and the men get lighter sentences if they are convicted). What happened to Mai would clearly never have happened to an upper-class woman in Karachi.

On thinking of this some more, I wonder whether the fact that this woman was poor and low-caste -- and that her brother's "crime" involved being seen with a higher-caste woman (apparently the higher-caste woman was seen by the village council as a legitimate "victim", as neither she nor her relatives seems to have been punished) -- had something to do with the provincial judges' willingness to acquit her rapists.

None of this makes the rape of Mai, or the actions of the village council or provincial judges, any more excusable. I'm just saying it's simplistic and, as periyar points out, kind of racist to put it all down to what's wrong with Pakistani "culture".

quote:

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people like puzzlic who have so much evidence at their fingertips.

---

quote:

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I'm just saying it's simplistic and, as periyar points out, kind of racist to put it all down to what's wrong with Pakistani "culture".

---

I post this here not because I want to change the topic to missing or murdered native women in Canada but because it has been mentioned by some 'how much better we are in the West', which was disputed by others. Skadl also mentioned Helen Betty Osbourne. It seems obvious to me from my reading of various sources (and watching Conspiracy of Silence) that many people in town knew who the killers were and nobody came forward.

quote:

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Helen Betty Osborne was abducted and brutally murdered near The Pas, Manitoba, early in the morning of November 13, 1971. The high school student,with dreams of becoming a teacher, originally from the Norway House Indian Reserve, was 19 years old when she was killed.

Several months later Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers concluded that four young men, Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan and Norman Bernard Manger, were involved in the death. Yet it was not until December 1987, more than 16 years later, that one of them, Dwayne Johnston, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Betty Osborne. James Houghton was acquitted. Lee Colgan, having received immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Houghton and Johnston, went free. Norman Manger was never charged.

---

I have mixed feelings including the link to the above quote for this reason:

quote:

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The owner/founder of this site is a grandmother living with AIDS, as a result of a brutal rape in 1990, which has left her unable to work. The cost of this website, research costs, printing, etc. has been covered almost entirely from her monthly disability cheques.
Each time someone visits the website, it takes up bandwidth. From time to time this results in the site not being available to the public because of insufficient bandwidth.

---

However, there are so many sickening cases listed (albeit far from complete) that I couldn't resist posting it here. Maybe some good souls among babblers will send her a donation, however small it may be. (Disclosure: I have no connection whatsoever to the owner of the site and found it googling.)

http://www.missingnativewomen.ca/

The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry was triggered by the shooting death of J. J. Harper at the hands of the Winnipeg police and inquired into his death as well as the murder of Helen Betty Osbourne. The 1200+ pages of the inquiry have a wealth of information about natives in Manitoba and Canada more generally over and above Vol 2 dealing with the 2 deaths. In passing: Tomorrow night at 8 CBC airs a movie about the shooting of J. J. Harper.

http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumell/chapter1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Osborne

About 8 years later Johnson got day parole!

quote:

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... In December, 1995, the chief of the Norway House First Nation, Ron Evans, Freda Albert of the Women’s Wellness Circle in Norway House and Eric Robinson discussed the matter of Dwayne Johnsons day parole with the parole board. As a result, Johnson's day parole was revoked April 3,1996. He got full parole on October 10, 1997...

---

So the bastard served ten years for rape and murder.

http://www.geocities.com/waabzy/native.html

The author of this site also writes:

quote:

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It is estimated that there are approximately 500 First Nations women missing in Canada, mostly from our Western Provinces, over the past 15 years or so.

---

There are also many sordid cases mentioned, in particular serial killer John Martin Crawford's attacks on Native women.

So we're not that different even though we aren't Soviet soldiers advancing towards Germany and seeing the deliberate destruction of Mother Russia (and murder of many by hanging them on trees) the retreating Nazi army had left behind. Please, don't get me wrong skadl. I do not think this justifed what they did in turn to Germans but it's part of the context.

quote:

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Pakistan's president said Wednesday that the victim in a high-profile rape case is free to go anywhere, and defended his earlier decision to ban her from travelling abroad.

"Let me make it absolutely clear that Mukhtar Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whomever she wants and say whatever she pleases. I have full faith in her and in her patriotism," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in a message on his website.

Musharraf's message came a day after the Supreme Court ordered that 13 men who allegedly assaulted 33-year-old Mukhtar Mai be re-arrested after overturning their earlier acquittals by lower courts.

---

quote:

---

A village council allegedly ordered the rape because her younger brother was seen with a woman from the more influential Mastoi clan.

Ms Mai and her brother say the allegations were made to cover up a sexual assault on the boy by a group of Mastoi men.

---

I don't understand: Was she "sentenced" to be gang-raped by the council of her won village or that of the Mastoi clan's? Not that it makes any difference, but apparently there's more to the story, if also her 12-year old brother was sexually assaulted.

and then Musharraf the wise intervenes with his infinite wisdom:

quote:

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The case acquired political overtones after President Pervez Musharraf barred Ms Mai from travelling abroad, fearing she might undermine Pakistan's image.

---

Not Pakistan's image!

and then he expounds:

quote:

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"We are no worse than any other developing country," he said earlier this month during a tour of New Zealand.

---

and his idea of freedom means she can say whatever she wants ... not quite

quote:

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"Let me make it absolutely clear that Mukhtar Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whomever she wants and say whatever she pleases. I have full faith in her and in her patriotism," Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in a message on his website.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by skdadl:
So you find this story amusing, do you, rban?

---

It came across as being sarcastic to me but I shouldn't speak for him/her

[ 02 July 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

Don't 'we' generalise all the time?

quote:

---

Originally posted by rban:
It was indeed sarcastic. A nation like Pakistan which systematically exterminates minorities, savagely oppresses women, promotes terrorism, and spreads nuclear weapons around the world is worty of contempt and sarcasm...don't you think?

---

That isn't the way I would put it, rban. No.

edited to add:

Besides when I express contempt for Nazi Germany I do not express contempt for all Germans.

Forgot the name of the 'internet law' that just made me lose my 'argument'

[ 02 July 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by VanLuke:
... but we're free to sing the praises of Canada in unqualified terms in spite of the third world conditions many native communites are in, skadl?

---

VanLuke? Have you bothered to read the whole of the thread preceding?

If so, why are you addressing such absurd questions in such obviously sarcastic tones to me? I made above, several times, the very point that I think you are clumsily trying to make here.

Canada should beware: sharia law will certainly lead to these situations her also:

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050701/asp/frontpage/story_4936743.asp

Leave me in peace, cries Imrana
TAPAS CHAKRABORTY

Lucknow, June 30: Imrana’s face was a picture of despair, underlined by the blackness of the burqa that covered her body. Except for the hands, which were folded as she begged to be left alone.

She is alone, with no political party barring the Left willing to speak up for her.

“She told me she has had enough,” said National Commission for Women chairperson Girija Vyas, who spoke to Imrana and husband Noor Ilahi for two hours at a Muzaffarnagar guesthouse today.

The 28-year-old mother of five, raped by her father-in-law, stopped by clerics’ fatwas from returning to her husband and turned into a pawn by politicians, seemed on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

She had just one plea: the rape and the publicity was bad enough; let her not now be paraded every day before the media and rights groups.

“Every time she is brought in to speak, her recent dark memories are rekindled,” Vyas said.

But there was no let-up. After meeting Vyas’s seven-member team, she was brought before the media around 12.30 on a ground near the guesthouse. Dozens of cameras focused on her face as Imrana folded her hands nervously.

“I will do whatever the Shariat orders me to do,” she said in a low voice. After a long pause, as if recalling what she had been tutored to say, she added: “If they tell me to leave my husband, I will. I will follow the fatwa (by the Deoband school of theology).”

Forced to leave her in-laws’ place in Charthwal village, Imrana has already moved in with her parents at Kukra.

Asked about father-in-law Ali Mohammad, she said: “Mujhe desh ke kanun me astha hai (I have faith in the law of the land).”

It was more or less what the Congress — Vyas’s party — had said, with Muslim votes uppermost in its mind.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had gone one better. Requested by the state women’s commission to come to Imrana’s aid, Yadav had openly backed the clerics.

“The decision of the Muslim religious leaders must have been taken after a lot of thought,” he said yesterday.

The politicians’ caution was easy to understand. The Saharanpur school of ulemas has threatened to hold a march if “outsiders” try to interfere in Shariat law. Some ulemas have offered Imrana financial help, but on condition that she desists from speaking against the Shariat or the clerics.

Even Vyas was all sympathy and little support. She put the ball in the court of “the Constitution” and “the judges who alone can interpret it and pass a judgment”.

Support, however, came from women Congress workers — the sort Imrana seems to anxious to avoid. Even before Vyas had reached the town, hundreds of these women made for the guesthouse.

The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board stood up for Imrana in Lucknow. Its chairperson, Shaista Ambar, held an “open panchayat” in which women activists lambasted the Deoband clerics and All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

1. You are once again violating copyright, although it has been explained to you before that you are putting rabble.ca in legal jeopardy by doing so.

I am sorry to read your perception of my post. I was not sarcastic. I don't even know what struck you as sarcastic.

If it is the remark saying I just lost the argument by bringing up the NAZIs you surprise me. I had the impression you have a sense of humour and it was meant to insert a little light heartedness into an argument that I thought could have(and apperently now has) gotten heavy.

Or if it is because of my comment about reserves than you missed the argument because praising our country in unqualfied terms (which I have done myself many times because in relative terms it is a great place to live in) is exactly the flip side of dissing one like Pakistan.

BTW asking me if I read the preceding thread is meant to be what? Have you done so? You find my first post near the top and many more after that. I have put a lot of effort into some posts here because I wnated to but find this question insulting.

And re babble policy about not dissing whole countries, are you sure you never did this about the USA?

I have dissed them too not because I generalise about all people (I have lots of American friends btw) but because I find the present regime repulsive. Ditto about Pakistan (except that my Pakistani friends are not as numerous as the US ones)

Respond if you wish and I will read it but I've got nothing more to say about this after that.

edited to add:

Just noticed what rubbed you the wrong way ('when have I sung the praises ..') It was a general statement and not one about you. Besides gimme a break or have you really never said that Canada is a great country without mentioning any negative aspects?

Ever thought of running for the Pope's position?

further edit:

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If so, why are you addressing such absurd questions in such obviously sarcastic tones to me? I made above, several times, the very point that I think you are clumsily trying to make here

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Thanks for the 'clumsy' and thanks for not reading my post where I put over half an hour of work into it while the thread was very active. I mentioned specifically that you had already mentioned Helen Betty Osbourne and I included links along the same lines.

Now who hasn't read the preceding thread?

[ 02 July 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

So let's just let this local disagreement pass.

I suspect that we can both agree that what matters is the empowerment of women who not only face oppression but also know much more about their own cultures than we can, and who presumably continue to care about those cultures, however fierce the resistance that is forced upon them.

I do hope you will read this. The post I was referring to is no 57 (if I counted correctly; I'm too uptight right now)

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... I post this here not because I want to change the topic to missing or murdered native women in Canada but because it has been mentioned by some 'how much better we are in the West', which was disputed by others....

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You probably never read it because by the time I was finished composing the post (took way over half an hour) the lively discussion had come to an end.

So I added the first paragraph after reading what had been written while I prepared my post. I haven't missed what you wrote and I didn't direct my comment (as noted earlier) at you per se.

I am upset and this explains the nature of my previous post. The 'clumsily', in particular, was very hurtful. I guess I don't know how to write, eh? On the other hand this is an internet chat room, not a classs in creative writing. So this comment was totally uncalled for.

The strangest part is that we don't really differ all that much, if at all, in our opinions in this matter. (Perhaps only if it is legitimate to generalise about whole nations. And believe me I've had my personal experiences with that and I think you know why.)

I had to say this (even so I promised not to comment any further) to get it out of my system.

Having said it though I will only add one more thing (in several ways:

I am sorry for that "clumsily." I was angry and hurt myself, because I thought you were attributing to me precisely the attitude I had been arguing against all the way through.

I do think we have just misread each other. Please don't worry, and let's both just go in peace.

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Pakistan's leading English-language daily newspaper - Dawn - went after Musharraf in an editorial headlined "Wrong thing to say". "If this attitude, of blaming rape and other crimes against women on women themselves and ridiculing NGOs (non-government organisations) that take up such issues, begins to travel upward from ignorant mullahs and male chauvinists to permeate the higher echelons of the administration, then God help us," it said.

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You gotta remember what you are dealing with. Pakistan is a predominantly agricultural feudal society whose 'rulers' are a combination of wealthy landowners, mullahs, and Army generals. Of course these people are oppressive towards women; anything different would be an aberration.

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Originally posted by rban:
Why shouldn't he say it? That's his attitude, he's only being honest.

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If you had read the link you would know that I was quoting a Pakistani editorial

You apperently think that it is OK to dismiss rape by smearing the victim.

That's the only explanation I have for your answer.

edited to add:

I have no illusions whatsoever about Musharaff. GWB and his friends apparently have.

Should the truth not be known in Canada because GWB and his cronies don't want to?

Please enlighten me if I'm wrong

[ 18 September 2005: Message edited by: VanLuke ]

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posted by rban: ... anyone who has an iota of knowledge about Pakistan knows that this is indeed the commonly held attitude there. ...
Don't let Musharaff's three-piece suit fool you. He is a feudal strongman of a failed, dysfunctional state. Nothing more, nothing less.
Just a common thug leading a nation of medieval fanatics.

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[ 18 September 2005: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

In 1947, Hindus and other minorities made up 20% of the Pakistani population. Today: less than 1%. That's 20-30 million people ethnically cleansed, slaughtered in cold blood or driven away. This is about equal to the numbers affected by Hitler and Stalin.

Pakistan is made of land and blood stolen from Hindus. Baluchis and other minorities are oppressed by the Army, and the nation is held together by brute force. The nation is an artifical construct, forged by hatred. It is no different from the empire forged by Nazi Germany.

I feel no guilt whatsoever in 'dissing' Pakistan, because if democracy prevailed and people were free to choose their path, the country would not exist. For one thing, 30% of the country belongs to Hindus and Sikhs, Baluchistan belongs to the indigeneous population, and the NWFP is practically a separate nation.

Oppressive dictatorships and fundamentalist Islamic regimes get no respect from me whatsoever. Why should they? They oppress women and minorities and this offends me. But that, of course, is because I am a highly principled person who is scrupulously fair and even-handed in my value judgements.

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Originally posted by rban:
[QB]... I am ... scrupulously fair and even-handed in my value judgements.

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a nation of medieval fanatics.

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I now understand why Skdadl likes Pakistan so much... she wants Rabble to be a dictatorship like Pakistan, where only the opinions of the ruling mullahs are allowed to be expressed and all contrary ideas are stifled.

Freedom and liberty will prevail. I have (correctly) stated that Pakistan is an artificial nation built by massacre, extermination, and expulsion of Hindus. It is thus an illegitimate nation which in a fair, non-racist, and egalitarian world, simply would not exist. It exists solely because of force, oppression, and horrific bigotry against women and minoriites.

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Originally posted by rban:
The truth shall be spoken. Justice shall prevail. Intellectual pygmies resort to oppression and attempt to stifle free speech and democracy due to the weakness of their own positions.

I now understand why Skdadl likes Pakistan so much... she wants Rabble to be a dictatorship like Pakistan, where only the opinions of the ruling mullahs are allowed to be expressed and all contrary ideas are stifled.

Freedom and liberty will prevail. I have (correctly) stated that Pakistan is an artificial nation built by massacre, extermination, and expulsion of Hindus. It is thus an illegitimate nation which in a fair, non-racist, and egalitarian world, simply would not exist. It exists solely because of force, oppression, and horrific bigotry against women and minoriites.

Pakistan is the opposite of what Rabble stands for. It is the 'anti-Rabble'. Rabble was created to oppose systems like Pakistan.

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Just thought I'd preserve this for posterity.