hild abuse is widespread in Pakistan, and girls suffer more, according to Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC).

Every day, on an average 3.9 children are sexually assaulted in the country. And the figure excludes abductions, says the SPARC report, State of Pakistan’s Children 2007.

The incidents of violence against and abuse of children are so widespread that any and every child may become a victim of sexual abuse, anywhere and by anyone and everyone.

Abusers include literate, illiterate, rich, poor, parents, relatives, (aunts, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, sisters), teachers, clerics, employers, strangers, neighbours, friends, domestic help, drivers, prison staff, adult prisoners. Of course 80 to 90 per cent of the abusers are men.

Children are abused in the safety of homes, in schools and madrassas and in parks. The ratio of abuse is, however, higher in rural areas than in town and cities.

The report says that over 5,200 children were so abused across the country last year. The figure marks a jump of 900 cases compared to the previous year. As many as 69 per cent of the victims were girls.

According to the report, Punjab tops the list in cases of child abuse, followed by Sindh and the North West Frontier Province. Balochistan has the lowest number of child victimisation cases.

Cases of child kidnapping increased to 324, of police torture to 241 and of suicides to 520 in the year 2007.

The report says that 726 children were murdered; 387 female and 305 male children were sexually assaulted; 366 children were victims of physical torture; 85 were punished under karo-kari (dispute settlement under tribal mechanism), 1,084 were kidnapped and 1,230 went missing.

Medindia

HYDERABAD: A mother and her teenaged daughter became the latest victim of honour killing in the Qasimabad Taluka here. Javed Jakhrani killed his wife, Sarah, 40, and daughter, Momal, 15, at their residence in the Indus Gas Colony on Monday. But bodies of the deceased were recovered from their house on Tuesday. Jakhrani presented himself for arrest before the police. He said he had no regret on killing his wife but was feeling bad on killing his daughter. The couple was not living together. They married 19 years ago in Shahdadpur and had three children, including the only daughter who was killed and two sons, who were living with their father.

The News International

The cousin of a woman murdered in a so-called “honour-killing” case allowed her body to be buried in his garden, the Old Bailey has heard.

Banaz Mahmod, 20, an Iraqi Kurd from south London, was killed and buried in a suitcase in Birmingham in April 2006.

Her father Mahmod Mahmod and uncle Ari Mahmod have been jailed for life.

Dashti Babaker, 21, and his friend Amir Abbas, 31, deny perverting the course of justice and “preventing the lawful and decent burial of a corpse”.

‘Ultimate penalty’

Mr Babaker, of Redcar Street, Camberwell, south-east London, and Mr Abbas, of no fixed address, were living at the house in Alexandra Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, where Ms Mahmod’s body was found buried 5ft deep in the back garden, the court heard.

Victor Temple, QC, for the prosecution, said family and community ties presented an “imperative need to uphold that which they perceive as honour”.

“Both these defendants chose to align themselves with and actively assist those who had engineered the murder of Banaz.

“Such actions would also allow them to ingratiate themselves with both their elders and their contemporaries, knowing that Banaz had been murdered.

“They were not only privy to the fact that the suitcase that contained her body was to be buried at the address at which they were resident but they were also complicit in preventing her proper burial,” he said.

Ms Mahmod, of Mitcham, was raped, tortured and strangled to death when her family discovered her affair with fellow Kurd, Rahmat Sulemani.

Her body was found in April 2006 after she went missing in January.

Mr Temple said Banaz Mahmod belonged to a “tight-knit” Kurdish community where traditions of honour played a central part.

In some circumstances family members, especially women, would be subject to retribution if they were seen to have brought shame on the rest of the group, he told the court.

‘In it together’

“The retribution often encompasses the ultimate penalty, that of death. So it was in the case of Banaz Mahmod,” Mr Temple said.

He added that those behind her murder visited the property several times and Mr Babaker and Mr Abbas were aware of this and “in it together”.

Mr Temple said: “Both the defendants knew that her body was buried in that garden. In that knowledge they did nothing to alert anybody of that fact.”

The court heard Mohamad Hama admitted the murder and is serving a life sentence while two other men, Mohammed Ali and Omar Hussein, are still wanted over the murder.

The trial continues.

BBC

Written by: Ms Khadijah Shah (Rays of Development Organization Fact Finding Team (RFFT))

 SAHIWAL, (RFFT) July 20^th: Police have registered a rape case after blatant delay for 20 days of the alleged occurrence on the commands of court. Sakeena Bibi, of 12/9-L, claimed that on June 30 her 13-year-old daughter (H) went out to gather fodders from pastures. She got worried when her daughter did not revisit. Eventually, she went to the fields and heard the cries of her daughter. She saw Shaukat Nosher and Alam Sher were raping H at gunpoint. When she shrieked, Khadam Hussain and Amin came to help her. The accused, however, threatened all of them with punishment if the happening to police but Dera Rahim Police Station House Officer Riaz Minhas rejected to register the case. On July 2, she went to the Sahiwal District Headquarters Hospital and discovers the medico-legal testimony of her daughter. 

A medical report supposed the girl was raped and eight injury marks were present on her body. Despite the medical report, police refused to terminate at first information details adjacent to indict. On July 19^th, Deputy Superintendent of police Sajid Hussain Shah prearranged Dera Rahim police to launch FIR.

“Dera Rahim Police registered the FIR against three accused,” police official Mohammad Iqbal informed RFFT. Zain-ul-abideen, investigation officer, said Alam Sher and Nosher were imprisoned.

Recommended by:

Ferhan Mazher,

Chairman,

(Rays of Development Organization, Sargodha, Pakistan)

Written by: Khadijah Shah (Rays of Development Organization)

 FAISLABAD, (ROD) July 20^th: Police executives are utilizing strategies to accumulate the skins of their five colleagues aligned with whom a supplementary district and session judge ordered a case for raping an under-trial woman accused on July 16^th, it is learnt.

Police introduced the session court judge as applicant in the case. Manzoor Ahmad, of C Block in Millat Town, stimulated the district and sessions court last week, claiming that his 17-year-old daughter ‘A’ was wedged in the murder of her fiancé Imran on March 14 who was murdered in Faisalabad. He asserts when Imran was executed, her daughter was at home.

He assumed Sub-Inspector (SI) Ghulam Rasool reserved his daughter in a confidential place till March 29 lacking to produce her before a court. When the SI produced her before the court, he appealed the court to send her to official imprisonment.

Manzoor, a laborer, said they coped to meet her daughter in jail on April 4. Quoting his daughter, Manzoor said SI Rasool and constables Iqbal, Ameer Wattoo and Shahbaz had stripped her naked frequently and tortured her. After physical torture, woman constable Nargis used to massage her, apparently to heal her torture marks. She alleged SI Shujat Ali Malhi has raped her twice Rasool also attempted to rape her many times and used to fondle her. He says Rasool was ready to exonerate her if she had slept with him, adding that when she refused, the SI declared her guilty and sent her to jail.

Rasool also arrested the elder sister of ‘A’ on March 26, on the directions of Malhi and both sisters were stripped naked in front of each other. He alleged police released his elder daughter after receiving  Rs 35,000 bribe on march 28. He says police warned him to keep mum or face consequences. The judge summoned ‘A’ from the judicial lockup and after listening to her, ordered Sargodha Road police to register a case against Malhi, Rasool, Iqbal, Wattoo, Shahbaz and Nargis.

The Sargodha Road police registered a case under section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) on July 19 against the five accused. Police officials, however, inducted the judge as a plaintiff instead of the alleged rapist’s father. Rasool has been arrested while the remaining accuseds are at large.

Investigation conducted by ROD revealed that police delayed the registration of the case for three days only to make a deal with the victim family. Police charged the accused only under section 376 of the PPC but overlooked the charges of torturing the woman and putting her in a private location after her arrest. The medical examination of the girl has yet to be conducted and police have not approached court to seek directions for the examination.

The Sargodha Road station house officer affirmed police would induct Manzoor or ‘A’ as a plaintiff of the case as the session judge was just an applicant of the case. He assumed raids were being conducted to arrest the remaining accused. He stated police would fetch the prey to hospital for her medical examination on Monday.

Recommended by:

Mr. Ferhan Mazher,

Chairman,

(Rays of Development Organization, Sargodha Pakistan)

In a twist to the Promila murder case, the UT Police arrested the deceased’s father and brother on Wednesday, on charges of murder. According to the police, Promila’s father Jaswant Singh and brother Sunil murdered her in order to save the honour of the family as she had got pregnant before marriage. Promila, a resident of Kajheri, was found dead on Sunday. The killers had poured acid on her face to avoid identification.

It is the contradictions in the statements of Jaswant, Sunil and Kaushalya, Promila’s mother, which made the police suspicious. They are yet to ascertain the involvement of Kaushalya in the crime.

Being a midwife, the police said, it was not difficult for Kaushalya to find out that her daughter was pregnant. When she told Jaswant about it, he asked her to carry out an abortion but since Promila was five months pregnant, abortion was risky and Kaushalya had to drop the plan, said UT SSP S S Srivastava.

He said the family had assured Promila of marrying her off to the person who had impregnated her, but when she refused to disclose his name, her father and brother hatched a conspiracy to kill her. The two allegedly took Promila to a secluded place on some pretext and killed her.

“They first strangulated the girl and then bludgeoned her with a stone before pouring acid on her face,” said the SSP. “The two also tore off her clothes to suggest a rape attempt,” said Srivastava.

After murdering Promila, the two returned home in the morning. “When Promila’s elder sister asked them about her, the two could not give any convincing reply,” the SSP told mediapersons.

What did them in?
* The statement of a witness who had seen Jaswant dancing under the influence of liquor on the night Promila was murdered
* The contradictory statements of the family members about their alibi when the murder took place
* The medical report which ruled out rape

Express India

Since June, Egypt’s government and Islamist opposition parties have been trading barbs over a new law designed to protect the rights of children. Reforms instituted by the law touch on issues ranging from children’s legal status to personal health issues.

The law was passed by parliament, which is dominated by President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling party. But the measure has spurred a debate over the competing roles of religion, tradition, and the state in the upbringing of children. The controversy is making waves in a country where 32 percent of the population is under the age of 15, according to a 2006 government census.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a banned yet tolerated opposition group that holds 20 percent of the seats in the lower house, argues that the law violates Islamic law and imposes foreign values on Egyptians.

Saad El Katatny, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in parliament, says his movement is not opposed to the child law as a whole, rather “just those provisions that run counter to the norms, customs, and nature of the Egyptian people.”

Aspects of the law that he takes issue with include articles that make it illegal to try children as adults, permit birth certificates for the children of unwed mothers, restrict corporal punishment, raise the marriage age to 18 years, and reinforce a standing ban on female circumcision.

“When you do things like this, for example limiting the age of marriage to 18, it does not reflect the norms of our society, it reflects international norms,” Mr. Katatny adds.

Supporters of the law accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of playing politics with children’s rights and argue that changing cultural attitudes that endanger young people is the exact intention of the law.

“We wanted the law to be stringent or extreme because we want it to challenge some of the prevalent norms and values in our society, particularly female genital mutilation (FGM) and the practice of child marriage,” says Hany Helal, who directs the Egyptian Center for the Rights of the Child and helped the government write the law.

“In our country, a number of forms of violence against children have become the norm,” he adds.

One of the most controversial subjects in the law is female circumcision, which remains widespread despite a year-old ban that was enacted after a girl died during the procedure in June 2007.

In Arabic, FGM is referred to as “purification.” It is widely seen as a rite of passage that helps protect girls from sexual desire and sin.

“Purification is a good thing, it’s a beautiful thing,” says Moubaraka Aly Mohamed, an elderly woman. “I have three daughters and we circumcised them all when they were 4 or 5 years old, so that they wouldn’t get into trouble at school,” she says, adding that they will soon circumcise her 3-year-old granddaughter. “It’s the only way. If they weren’t circumcised they would be committing sinful acts that I would not approve of,” she says.

Egypt has one of the highest FGM rates in the world. According to a 2005 study conducted by UNICEF, 96 percent of women between the ages of 15 to 49 who had ever been married are circumcised. A recent study by the country’s Ministry of Health and Population also found that 50.3 percent of girls between the ages of 10 and 18 had been circumcised.

Katatny says that the Brotherhood is not in favor of female circumcision, but opposes banning it because it is a tradition that should remain an option for medical reasons and “beautification” purposes.

For her part, Dr. Amna Nosseir, a former dean of Al Azhar University and a member of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, says the law’s Islamist opponents are being “obnoxious.” “Female circumcision is in no way, shape, or form part of the Islamic religion. It is an example of how religious texts can be manipulated to support local customs or people’s own points of view,” she says.

Human rights activists suggest that the child law’s religious opponents are more concerned about embarrassing the government than protecting children. “This is a law the government wanted. It was a big investment for them,” says Clarisa Bencomo, a Cairo-based researcher in the children’s rights division of Human Rights Watch. “There is a lot in this law that makes Egypt look good internationally, but it is also something that makes it easy for the Muslim Brotherhood to put its finger in the government’s eye.”

The opposition backlash combined with a legal system rife with overworked and poorly trained lawyers have many worried, however, that efforts to implement the measure will remain complicated.

Christian Science Monitor

Hostel Girl seeks protection

 Written by: Ms Khadijah Shah (Rays of Development Organization (ROD))

MULTAN, Pakistan (ROD) July 17^th: One of the complainants in a sexual pestering case at a confined campus has required police fortification against ‘harassment by the administration.’ In her submission to the Multan police chief, the grievance, a psychology student, avowed that she and one of her class fellows were disgraced by some teachers on May 23^rd. When they filed a complaint with the campus head, different people started harassing them as well as their families. Now, she declared, hostel administration was also threatening them by using unusual tactics.

City Police Officer (CPO) Saud Aziz believed that he had asked Superintendent Police (SP) Shershah Town to investigate the accusations. He supposed he would converse the issue with the District Co-ordination Officer (DCO) for the foundation of an autonomy investigation agency. Meanwhile, alarming menace to her life the grumble has moved to Human Rights Commission’s local office.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP’s) controller for South Punjab Rashid Rehman assumed that the retort of the campus administration towards this responsive matter had been reckless as it occupied non-professional people to accomplish an inquiry. He said when the complainants had expressed their distrust on three out of four members of the inquiry committee; administration should better go for an independent probe into the case. In his reply, the campus head discarded the annoyance accusation.

In a corner of Istanbul today, the man who might be described as Turkey’s gay poster boy will be buried – a victim, his friends believe, of the country’s deepening friction between an increasingly liberal society and its entrenched conservative traditions.

Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in San Francisco last year, was shot leaving a cafe near the Bosphorus strait this week. Fatally wounded, the student tried to flee the attackers in his car, but lost control, crashed at the side of the road and died shortly afterwards in hospital. His friends believe Mr Yildiz was the victim of the country’s first gay honour killing.

“He fell victim to a war between old mentalities and growing civil liberties,” says Sedef Cakmak, a friend and a member of the gay rights lobby group Lambda. “I feel helpless: we are trying to raise awareness of gay rights in this country, but the more visible we become, the more we open ourselves up to this sort of attack.”

Turkey was all but closed to the world until 1980 but its desire for European Union membership has imposed strains on a society formerly kept on a tight leash. As the notion of rights for minorities such as women and gays has blossomed, the country’s civil society becomes more vibrant by the day. But the changes have brought a backlash from traditionalist circles wedded to the old regime.

Bungled efforts by a religious-minded government to loosen the grip of Turkey’s authoritarian version of secularism have triggered a court case aimed at shutting the ruling party down, with a verdict expected within a month.

Against this backdrop, the issues of women’s rights, sexuality and the place of religion in the public arena have been particularly contentious. Ahmet Yildiz’s crime, his friends say, was to admit openly to his family that he was gay.

“From the day I met him, I never heard Ahmet have a friendly conversation with his parents,” one close friend and near neighbour recounted. “They would argue constantly, mostly about where he was, who he was with, what he was doing.”

The family pressure increased, the friend explained. “They wanted him to go back home, see a doctor who could cure him, and get married.” Shortly after coming out this year, Mr Yildiz went to a prosecutor to complain that he was receiving death threats. The case was dropped. Five months later, he was dead. The police are now investigating his murder. For gay rights groups, the student’s inability to get protection was a typical by-product of the indifference, if not hostility, with which a broad swathe of Turkish society views homosexuality. The military, for example, sees it as an “illness”. Men applying for an exemption to obligatory military service on grounds of homosexuality must provide proof – either in the form of an anal examination, or photographs.

“The media ignores or laughs off violence against gays,” says Buse Kilickaya, a member of the gay lobbying group Pink Life, adding that Ahmet Yildiz’s death “risks being swept under the carpet and forgotten like other cases in the past”. Turkey has a history of honour killings. A government survey earlier this year estimated that one person every week dies in Istanbul as a result of honour killings. It put the nationwide death toll at 220 in 2007. In the majority of cases, the victims are women, but Mr Yildiz’s friends suspect he may be the first recorded victim of a homosexual honour killing.

“We’ve been trying to contact Ahmet’s family since Wednesday, to get them to take responsibility for the funeral,” one of the victim’s friends said yesterday, standing outside the morgue where his body has been for three days. “There’s no answer, and I don’t think they are going to come.” The refusal of families to bury their relatives is common after honour-related murders.

Mazhar Bagli, a Turkish sociologist who has interviewed 189 people convicted of honour killings, has never heard of a death revolving around homosexuality but has no doubt that it could be used as justification. “Honour killings cleanse illicit relationships. For women, that is a broad term. Men are allowed more sexual freedom, but homosexuality is still seen by some as beyond the pale.”

While his death may be unique, Mr Yildiz is by no means the first victim of widespread homophobia. When an Istanbul court decided to close down the city’s largest gay rights group late this May, commentators took the decision as evidence of a crackdown on the community spearheaded by Turkey’s current religious-minded government. Lambda Istanbul had been taken to court by the Istanbul governor’s office on the grounds that it was “against the law and morality”.

However, many gay activists are reluctant to draw a connection with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), noting it was the first party in Turkey’s history to send a deputy to attend a conference on gay rights. This year’s Gay Pride parade in Istanbul was the largest ever, they also point out. Long active in more liberal parts of western Turkey, gay groups are even beginning to meet relatively openly in the conservative east of the country where Ahmet Yildiz came from.

But according to the former neighbour, the physics student’s blank refusal to hide who he was in any way may have been too much for his family. “He could have hidden who he was, but he wanted to live honestly,” the neighbour said. “When the death threats started, his boyfriend tried to persuade him to get out of Turkey. But he stayed. He was too brave. He was too open.”

Killed by those they loved

So-called “honour killings” continue to be a grim reality wherever conservative social mores resist the rule of law.

In Turkey, a recent government study estimated that around 1,000 honour killings have been committed in the past five years. The victims are mostly young women, murdered by male relatives for transgressing chauvinistic social rules.

Women have been killed for having illicit affairs, talking to strangers, or even for being the victim of rape. Turkey’s justice system has recently increased penalties for honour killings, and ended the practice of allowing murderers to claim family honour as an extenuating circumstance. However, getting a child relative to carry out the killing remains a horrifying way around the law.

The problem is not confined to Turkey. The UN estimates that 5,000 honour killings take place globally every year, from Brazil to Pakistan to Britain. Police estimate more than a dozen honour killings take place in the UK every year, such as the brutal rape and murder of 20-year-old Banaz Mahmod by her uncle and father in 2006, or the murder of Rukhsana Naz, strangled by her family because she wanted a divorce in 1999.

Honour killings have not so far really targeted gay men, although in 2006 a wave of anti-gay killings took place in Iraq, carried out by fanatical Islamist militias. A Jordanian man was shot and wounded by his brother in 2004, apparently for being gay.

The Independent

The body of a Christian teenager has been dragged out of a canal in Pakistan after he was allegedly tortured to death in an ‘honour killing’ for seeing a Muslim girl.

The case is highlighted by Release International, which serves persecuted Christians around the world. It is subject to investigation, so some details have been omitted.

The 19-year-old man, ‘Rehmat’, was brought up by Christian parents in a city in Punjab. He met 19-year-old ‘Fatima’ on their way to school. Both names have been changed for legal reasons.

Fatima was brought up by a Muslim family in the neighbourhood. Although it was taboo for Muslims and Christians to become romantically linked they started to call one another on their mobile phones.

One day Rehmat left his phone at home. Fatima rang and his mother picked up the call. Recognising that her son’s life would be in danger she warned him to keep away from Fatima.

Then she went to Fatima’s parents to tell them, too, so they could nip the relationship in the bud. But this only made matters far worse for her son.

Fatima’s parents scolded her and confined her to her room. And according to Release International’s partners – lawyers representing Rehmat’s family – Fatima’s parents issued a stark warning.

They warned Rehmat’s parents that they would not permit a Christian man to disgrace Islam, and threatened to kill Rehmat if the relationship continued.

But 19-year-old Fatima continued to call Rehmat on his mobile phone. Then one day she rang and asked to see him alone outside the area.

But she was not alone. Her family had put her up to it. Five family members, including her father and two uncles went with her. Unknown to Rehmat’s family, their son hired a motorbike and went to the liaison – and to his death.

Joseph Francis, of Release partners, CLAAS (Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement), which gives legal support to persecuted Christians in Pakistan, said:

“They took Rehmat by force. They held him and tortured him for almost two days. Rehmat could not bear the severity of the torture and died.”

Eventually, the teenager’s body was pulled out of a canal. CLAAS lawyers say the police refuse to report the case as murder and are insisting on registering the cause of death as suicide.

“The police were biased, because it was a matter of religion,” says Joseph Francis. CLAAS has now taken up the case with the authorities and is pressing for justice for Rehmat’s family.

“There have been many tragic cases of so-called honour killing in Pakistan,” says Release International’s CEO Andy Dipper. “And this appears to be one of the worst. A 19-year-old teenager allegedly tortured to death – just for talking to a neighbour’s girl on the phone.

“Sadly, all too often, Christians in Pakistan are treated as second-class citizens with few rights under the law. They face religious prejudice in the raw and contempt for the value of human life. That prejudice is highlighted here by the apparent refusal by the police to see that justice is done – regardless of religion. Please pray for Rehmat’s family. And pray for change in Pakistan

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