Justice For All

Continuing my own International Women's Week, which so far has a very Muslim feel...

Mukhtar Mai's (born Mukhtaran Bibi) story is tragic and inspiring all at the same time. She was sentenced by a self-appointed tribal council in her small Pakistani village to be gang raped. Her crime? Her brother had brought shame to a tribe by allegedly having an affair with a high-status woman from that tribe. It was decided that the way to restore honor to their tribe was to bring shame to his tribe by gang raping his sister. And that's what happened. Four volunteers inflicted the "punishment" while a large crowd of men watched and cheered. She was then thrown out on the street, naked. This kind of attack, as well as "honor killings" of women, is not rare in Pakistan and other mideast countries. Many of the women feel such shame that they end up killing themselves, and Mai thought about doing just that. You know what she did instead? She fought back. When the local police ignored her, she went to the media. Imagine, a Muslim woman went to the press and told the world she was raped and she demanded justice. Eventually the political pressure was too much for Pakistan's government, and 14 men were put on trial. Six were convicted and sentenced to hang (I'm no fan of the death penalty, but at least it is a sign that gang-raping and beating a woman should be treated as seriously as, say, pre-marital sex or stealing livestock).

Mai was also awarded about $8,000. Now you would expect that, after all she's been through, Mai would do something nice for herself with that money. Car, a vacation, shopping spree at The Gap, 2600 pints of Ben & Jerry's, or ever so many Wilco concerts.

What did she do? She built a school. For girls. The first one in her village. She has dedicated her life to educating the next generation of women, so maybe the same thing won't happen to them. She is still in danger of retribution attacks, both for fighting to have her attackers arrested and the school. An educated woman is dangerous to such misogynist patriarchal assholes. But she stays in her village anyway, and does important work at great risk to herself. Heroic. What an extraordinary person.

There has been bad news recently in her case. Seems that a different court, called the Lahore High Court, has overturned the convictions on five of the men and commuted the sentence of the sixth. Pakistan's Supreme Court decided to take over the case, but the Lahore court ordered the men released anyway. Four of them have been let out of prison and have returned to the village. She is appealing to have them sent back, hopefully she will be successful.

You can read more about Mai at a her website (apparently very low bandwidth, goes down often), and also make donations of money or materials to her school.