MULTAN: The canopy — lit purple and pink — is packed with women. There are row upon row of students from Multan’s Bahauddin Zakariya University and staff from government health and education departments.

The only men, in the back rows, are police or district administration officials. Many of the seat-fillers don’t even know why they are there. They have not even heard of South Asia’s first Violence Against Women Centre, for whose inauguration they had boarded buses at eight in the morning. It is now early afternoon, and there is still no sign of the chief minister.

In the front rows, an altercation breaks out. Women MNAs and MPAs who are in the second row want to sit in the front. “It’s our day, we were on the committee, we should be sitting in the first row,” they argue as police try to mediate. But the male MNAs refuse to budge. “The police were on our side,” says one of the female MPAs. “None of our colleagues in Multan can say anything to them, but since we’re from Lahore, we can try.”

It’s a fitting incident at an event that was hailed as a milestone in women’s progress, a centre that seeks to address the weaknesses hampering prosecution and conviction in cases of gender-specific violence. While new laws and this gleaming centre seek to punish perpetrators of violence against women, the violence is only a problem because women are considered lesser mortals.

The centre itself is adjacent to Multan’s judicial complex in the dun-hued suburbs of this ancient city. Inside too, the bold colours and airy interiors, biometric fingerprint devices installed at doors, and branding speak of the 21st century.

Built at a cost of 230 million rupees in 17 months, it is being touted as a refuge, as a safe space for women, a fortress against retrogression and patriarchy. At the inauguration ceremony of the centre, those representing mediaeval notions of womanhood were in the front rows with major political players.

Among them is Dr Raghib Naeemi, an Islamic scholar of the Barelvi school of thought and son of an outspoken critic of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s interpretation of Islam who was killed by a suicide attacker. Dr Naeemi is here to pledge his support to the centre and the Women’s Protection Bill.

Not without reservations, though. He tells me that the review committee for the bill hasn’t met in a year, but cannot explain what changes he wants in the law.

Isn’t it a little late for objections, I ask, especially now that it is being implemented? When I press him, he says: “Clerics objected to the 1962 Muslim family laws, but they were implemented anyway.”

Salman Sufi, the director general of the Punjab Chief Minister’s Special Reforms Unit , has spearheaded this initiative. He is virtually ubiquitous at the ceremony. He has brought along his young daughter, dressed in a green shalwar kameez. He says the government is determined to press on with the law despite the petulant objections of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl and Jamaat-i-Islami. “Political governments tend to step back or negotiate with the right wing. We tackled them head-on.”

For now, there is only one centre, but the provincial government plans to set up one in every district of Punjab. In other words, the pro-woman law is only applicable in the district of Multan, for now.

Sufi says it was important to develop an implementation mechanism first before the law is put into action. “The Multan centre is the headquarters, but we will be refurbishing existing Darul Amans at a much lower cost, and more quickly.”

He concedes, however, that staffing the centres with policewomen could be difficult.

According to police, there are just three women-only police stations in Punjab and women constitute only 1.2 per cent of the police force in the province. “The Punjab IG gave us a special contingent of policewomen for the centre, but we will be advertising for new hires as more and more centres open,” says Sufi. “There are roadblocks.”

At the centre, the cheerful DSP Shahida Parveen is basking in media attention. She shows me the interrogation room with its one-way observer mirror, the polished guns for raids locked in a room accessed with a biometric fingerprint device with pride. “Since the law was passed, 175 cases have been registered under the Women’s Protection Bill all over Punjab till January,” she says. “We’re expecting lots of cases. Women were hesitant to file complaints previously because they didn’t want to talk to policemen.”

Then she asks me jokingly “don’t you want me to show you the detention centre where we will lock up the men”?

Is it a matter of women versus men? The gender studies students from Bahauddin Zakariya University attending the inauguration ceremony certainly seem to think so. “None of the male students from the university are here. But they should’ve been here,” they tell me. “It’s important for it to be staffed by women because we can’t change norms,” says Anoushba Tariq, one of the students. “They write fatwas against us.”

Another student, Quratalain, says men feel insecure when women become aware of their rights.

By the time the chief minister arrives at 1.30pm, the front rows have been stuffed with more chairs.

By then Multan city had been seemingly emptied of police as most of them were deputed to the ceremony. The men in these seats stand up to shout a slogan in favour of the PML-N or Shahbaz Sharif at choice moments. And even as provincial Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, Punjab Governor Muhammad Rafique Rajwana and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif start their speeches by saying the right things about women or assert that this is not the time for political point-scoring, most of those present think otherwise. The Punjab CM speaks at length about how the metro was derided as a ‘jangla’ bus, but now it is being replicated in Peshawar.

The next day, newspaper headlines cry out “jangla bus” and are full of comments about the Panama case. It’s as if the Violence Against Women centre is just the fine print.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2017