When a poached lion gets more attention than the rape of a minor
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The process of bringing rape victims justice is murky business in a country where the concept of consent is practically non-existent.
We live in an honour-crazed society where little girls are overprotected to extremes. They are not let into public spaces. Much of their childhood exuberance is quashed. But even this overcast guardedness could do nothing to prevent what happened to the seven-year-old girl abducted from Abdullah Shah Ghazi Goth, and found in Sachal Goth, Karachi.
Seven can be counted on one’s hands. It’s too little and too vulnerably finite. It’s a world of rag dolls, fairies that heal little knee-cuts and the feel of ice-cream in your brain.
The underlying story is familiar enough: raped, strangled, left to die.
Rape cases have a very short window of time to nail perpetrators; but action never seems to be taken quickly enough. These crimes are also difficult to prove.
The difficulty, however, is not just forensic, it is the slightly more extreme form of acceptability of the “boys will be boys” theorem. Most people don’t come forward because they fear social repercussions or the punishment that can follow for those aiding justice.
In small towns like Sachal Goth, the perpetrators are usually very popular or protected or both; the alleged perpetrators, the witnesses, and the law enforcement authorities all seem to know each other well. Suspects? What suspects?
Also see: Gujranwala youth attempts to rape minor, sets her on fire
The ghastly lack of convictions that mar the numerous cases of rapes involving minors is so acceptable that for many Pakistanis, it has ceased to be shocking.
Our conscience is stirred for a poached lion in Zimbabwe or the persecuted DJ of a sinking political party, but it fails to register the brutality, pain and anguish suffered by a young girl raped and killed in Karachi.
Outrage? What outrage?
There were no Chief Minister visits to the mourning family; no kitty-party with placards out on the streets in warm July; no NGO-aunties shouting slogans; not even armchair jihad on Twitter, and certainly not the whole shebang of a media that pushes for more accountability from law-enforcement at prime time.
How far could the media go to fight for her rights anyway, when this same media loves to sensationalise the putrid horror of rape and sell soaps which promote the most helpless damsel as the most desirable?
Also read: Lahore and Quetta: How the media treats rape differently
Morning TV shows, political programming and the religion-on-steroids Urdu press don’t exactly want to acknowledge that there is something inherently broken in our society; that as it struggles to reconcile modern women’s rights with their tribal ownership of womenfolk, it is asphyxiating.
Something drastically needs to change.
Earlier this year, there was the one-and-a-half-year-old girl raped and strangled to death in Karachi, and then last year, the Hazara girl murdered in Quetta after attempted rape who was only six. Under a shroud of victim-blaming; shame and lack of redemption for the family, chances are, there are far too many muffled screams and trembling little bodies. Hundreds of minor-rapes go unreported.
So much of the rape culture we cultivate in our adolescent young men’s minds can be addressed by naming the demon, shaming the demon. But too few are bringing it out in the open.
We have created generations upon generations of sexually repressed, spiritually deprived, deeply hostile men who have waged war on women. Little girls are just the easier ones to punish.
I don’t know if there are any quick fixes. More culture and art, perhaps, to let men feel more and denounce less? More deterrence to violate a child’s dignity and less tolerance for those who don’t catch the perpetrators, perhaps.
What I do know is that a mother in Abdullah Shah Ghazi Goth has some clothes hanging in a dusty cupboard for a little seven-year-old little princess that will never be worn again. That, should not be a minor problem.
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The author is a public speaker, author, women’s rights activist and the co-founder of the NGO Women’s Advancement Hub. Her writings have appeared in Dawn, The Express Tribune, the BBC, The Guardian and NPR, and she has two published books on feminism. She lives in Islamabad and tweets @AishaFsarwari.
