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The mechanics of 'honour' in Pakistan
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Iqbal Detho, Coordinator, Human Rights Education Forum, Pakistan &
Amélie Barras, Researcher, Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
Pakistani society is built on the Purdah system, which discourages contact
between a man and woman who are not related because it could lead to a sexual
encounter. Consequently, where such contact does occur it is therefore presumed
to be sexual. Under these circumstances, the woman concerned will be subjected
to questioning by her kinsfolk over her intentions and morality, as in Islam
women are portrayed as the sex who must be subjected to control in body and
speech. Where this control is transgressed, it violates the men's honour and may
be subjected to punishment. This is reinforced by the fact that the 'negative'
conduct of the woman also has consequences for the reputation of the whole
family, and particularly on any unmarried sisters. [i]
Therefore, the behaviour of a woman is judged differently from that of a man,
whereby it is likely to bring a much greater calamity onto the family than
anything a man might cause to happen.
It seems that honour in Pakistan determines the faith of a family and that
revenge finds its consolation in death. Unfortunately, not only do 'honour'
crimes treat women as less than humans, but they are also used to settle
disputes between families that often have little to do with the woman in
question, let alone anything to do with honour.
The genesis and growth of jirgas
Although 'honour killing' is a crime in Pakistan, the state has done little to
stem the practice. Rather than attempt to unify and rationalise the legal
system, the government has left justice in the hands of the tribal judiciary,
commonly known as jirga. These jirgas operate as a parallel justice system.
Although many Pakistanis link honour killings and jirga rulings with religious
practice, the jirga are rooted in the power of feudal lords, not Islamic
doctrine.
The origin of the jirgas is embedded in the custom that came about as a result
of the redefinition of crime, custom and law shaping honour codes by the British
administration and Baluch tribe. This arrangement allowed people to seek justice
through traditional authorities rather than resort to state institutions, even
though they came under direct state authority.
The justice system in Sindh during the early years of the British military
government was not much different from what it replaced. The manner of dealing
with crime was as arbitrary and interpretive as that of the tribal leaders, if
not more so. Whereas the province had earlier at least been under a confederacy,
now it was ruled by a single autocratic regime employing martial law for that
purpose. Earlier, the appellate power of life and death was in the hands of the
tribal rulers; it was transferred by conquest to the military commander turned
governor.
The first judicial and advocate-general of Sindh, a Captain Keith Young, wrote
that there seemed to be no fixed idea of what a justice system should do or be.
Captain Young remarked that it would be 'better to have no trials at all' than
those taking place at the time, recording at least one instance in which, in the
absence of the accused, the judge sentenced the witnesses instead.
The only significant difference between the tribal and colonial legal system was
that the law went from being oral to written, causing an increase in the
procedures and role for bureaucracy. For the British, the Baluchi system was no
system, because there was no writing and records of cases. British summary
justice created the semblance of fixed codes and rules, and the first
advocate-general was thoroughly preoccupied with the making of these.
Although the difference between the British and Baluchi systems related more to
differences in conceptions of crime and punishment, the British presented the
two as a radical opposition between a civilised system and a barbaric one. For
instance, the Baluch tribal leaders were barbaric because they were lax in
punishment. The British administrators, on the other hand, were humane, even
when they ordered whippings and hangings. This led to the introduction of new
laws governing killings arising out of adultery, which was reinterpreted, and
consensus built around the traditional justice system now using codified legal
structures.
In Sindh, from the 1860s the British opted for strategic compromises to secure
indirect rule through a class of local middlemen. This led to the merging of
tribal arbitration with British law. The result was a new configuration of
power, a nexus between the middlemen, chiefs and British administrators
colluding in exercising power. It was at this time that the supreme jirga was
established for the settlement of the inter-tribal disputes, including cases of
honour killings. The 'barbaric' customs that British law had opposed now became
'humane' methods for mediation, including encouraging them to exchange women as
a means to settling disputes.
Honour in deceit
The new hybrid system made political agents key figures to an unprecedented
extent. They became centres of power playing roles both as custodians and
enforcers of law. The end result is a state where today tribal considerations
are paramount. Tribes are seen to order their lives through notions of
self-help, vested in the individual but supported by the collective; the state
in Pakistan in effect still encourages the seeking of justice through these
notions, encouraging people to settle matters among themselves, rather than in
the courts. New ways of adjusting and strengthening tribal affiliations,
primarily by organising justice within the framework of honour, have followed;
'custom' has been manipulated, renewed and reinvented to suit the purposes of
the day.
The sanctity of the jirgas is secured in the eyes of the rural population
through the unquestioned power of the feudal lords, who act as the exclusive
rulers of their domains, keeping people socially and economically dependent.
Their economic supremacy also allows them control over police and state
officials, and guarantees their collective role as the heads of Pakistan's
jirgas, which thereby furthers their capacity to subdue local populations.
The jirgas today generally sit and give judgments when both sides (the victims
and the accused) agree to place the matter before them, or if a matter is taken
as involving the honour of the tribe. In cases regarding women, their aim is to
restore the balance disturbed by a woman's alleged misdemeanour. They are not
intended to elicit truth and punish the culprits. The balance is restored when
compensation for damage is negotiated and settled. In a case of honour killing
after alleged illicit sexual relations, the karo, the person alleged to have had
illicit sexual relations with a woman, the kari, must pay the
compensation. This is to allow for his life to be spared, for the loss of honour
of the man to whom the kari belonged, and for the woman the man who killed her
lost. The amount of compensation is fixed within each tribe, but jirgas also
decide how the compensation is to be disbursed. Compensation can be in the form
of money or women or both. The jirgas not only consist exclusively of men, but
also deny the rights of women even to be heard. Many of those men may be members
of government assemblies and other officials, who in exchange for the central
government surrendering power over local 'private' affairs offer guarantees of
political stability. In practice, this means that a small and homogenous segment
of the population is given absolute power over all others, particularly women.
The transfer of women in particular is considered by many tribal leaders to be a
good way to settle disputes. The Sardar of Shikarpur, Khadim Hussain Jatoi, has
stated that "the giving of women is the best way to cool tempers, to heal a
conflict and to bring families together by the links of marriage". Where
one woman is killed, two can be given as compensation. Nawab Muhammad Aslam
Raisani has explained that this accounts as one woman for the life of the woman
killed, and one in lieu of the life of her illicit lover, who will be spared. A
lawyer in the Sukkur High Court Bar Association has rationalised this
calculation slightly differently: "One woman is given to compensate the man
for the disturbance in his life and one to replace the kari." Whatever the
reasoning, women are treated as chattel in compensatory exchanges after murders,
forced to live in hostile environments without their consent, to be treated
ignobly all their lives.
Although tribal leaders in upper Sindh and Balochistan assert that their
decisions effectively settle disputes and provide lasting peace, the evidence
does not support this claim. Settlements are often flouted and women killed
despite their decisions, as to break a jirga settlement is not dishonourable.
Killing and violence, deceit and the breaking of promises are not dishonourable
where they are intended to restore honour. Therefore, rulings are readily
ignored, and karos who have paid heavy compensation are sometimes killed years
later; karis returning to their families on promises of safety invariably end up
being slaughtered.
The declining status of women in Pakistan
Honour killing prevails because gender discrimination is present at all levels
of society in Pakistan, including its legal system, and is growing. Under
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, the status of women was slowly
improving; however, this trend has been reversed since the time of President Zia
ul Haq, who politicised Islam in order to forge legitimacy and popularity. He
introduced a series of legal changes in the name of Islam that were highly
detrimental to women, notably the Hudood Ordinances, which punish adultery with
a maximum of 10-years imprisonment and the infliction of 30 lashes. [ii]
Not only have thousands of women since been imprisoned under these regulations,
but women who have been raped have also been charged with adultery or
fornication and jailed.
In fact, although chastity, virtue and honour are all supposedly matters of
strict concern for Pakistani men, women are daily victims of sexual assault as
men are rarely punished for the crime, and women rarely even report it. Hence,
rape is often used as a weapon of revenge. One researcher has written that
50 % of reported rapes in the country are gang-rapes, usually carried out
when someone wants to take revenge against a man. The most common way to do it
is to rape the man's female relatives. Allah Wasai, for example, who was eight
months pregnant at the time, was brutally gang-raped by twenty-six men to
settle a score with her father in law. After the attack, she was paraded naked
through her community. [iii]
It is a pity that three decades after General Zia's rule the Hudood
Ordinances have not been repealed, despite the fact that they were introduced
without any parliamentary debate. The current administration could have done
something, and indeed began with establishing a national commission on the
status of women in 2000 and promising to review the laws undermining the status
of women in Pakistan. But the level of violence against women has only
increased, while the government acts to appease feudal lords and Islamic
authorities in order to stay in power. So the ordinances remain intact.
Pakistani society revolves around honour, yet 'honour' is being used as a
pretext to preserve and maintain existing social relations at the expense of the
rights of women. Under any circumstances, the government is morally and legally
responsible for changing this dissatisfactory situation. Article 25 of the
constitution explicitly states that nothing "shall prevent the state from
making any special provision for the protection of women". Furthermore,
under international law the state is obliged to ensure that everyone in its
jurisdiction enjoys equal rights before the law. Even if jirgas are left to
carry out state functions the state still has to ensure that the rights of all
persons are fully protected. But what the government of Pakistan ought really to
be doing is working towards the elimination of the jirgas and repealing the
Hudood Ordinances. Those steps may be a beginning towards a system of justice
that protects, rather than violates, human rights, and in particular, those of
Pakistan's women.
- Jasmin Mirza, Between Chaddor and the Market, Oxford University Press,
2002, p. 30. [Back to contents]
- See further, Naeem Shakir, 'Women and religious minorities under the
Hudood Laws in Pakistan' and Ijaz Ahmed, 'The destiny of a rape victim in
Pakistan', article 2, vol. 3, no. 3, June 2004, pp. 14-28. [Back
to contents]
- Jan Goodwin, Price of Honor, Plume Books, 2003, p. 52. [Back
to contents]
Posted on 2004-11-08
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