The young woman from Dadu, Sindh, first hit headlines for pursuing a case of gang rape in the Sindh High Court, an almost unheard of event in this country where rape victims, instead of seeking justice, are meant instead to commit suicide out of shame.
But Kainat, with the support of her family, alleged that four men kidnapped and raped her in 2007; she brought a case against all four of them that year. Because of this, she strikes me as the Mukhtaran Mai of Sindh, unfortunate but appropriate considering the violence committed against her, and the difficulties she encountered in trying to win justice.
The case went through all the usual twists and turns that we have come to expect of our legal system, discriminatory and biased as it is against women and the violence committed against them. It was transferred several times between different courts; a nikahnamah was produced as evidence that the young woman was in fact legally married to one of the accused (supporting yet another patriarchal bogey that rape can’t take place within marriage); lawyers for the defendants argued that the case had been registered while the Hudood Ordinances were still in effect, so the rape could not be prosecuted under the Women’s Protection Bill; and finally, despite medical evidence that Kainat had indeed been raped by more than one person, the four men were acquitted of all wrongdoing in May 2010.
I mention Mukhtaran Mai because there are striking similarities between her and Kainat Soomro: both women were victims of gang rape; both chose not to remain silent, but to take their cases to the highest courts possible, waiving their rights to anonymity in return for justice. In both cases, the alleged criminals were influential people from the villages and districts that the women lived in; Mukhtaran Mai’s rapists were convicted of the crime, but then they were acquitted in an appeals court.
Both women’s brothers were attacked, too: Mukhtaran Mai’s teenaged brother was reportedly sexually assaulted as revenge for a false claim of adultery, which turned out to be the grounds for Mukhtaran Mai’s ordeal; while Kainat Soomro’s older brother was kidnapped and killed in May of this year allegedly for his support in Kainat’s court case against her rapists (the reason that Kainat was in the papers again this week, protesting against the death of her brother).
But the similarities end here. For one thing, Kainat Soomro was much younger than Mukhtaran Mai when she was criminally assaulted: 13 as compared to Mukhtaran Mai’s 30. A crime of rape against a woman is hideous at any age, but for a 13-year-old to be attacked in this way should carry extra weight and less leniency for the criminals involved. In Pakistan we do recognise that people under 18 aren’t ready for certain activities — driving, voting, joining the army for example — so I don’t see why we can’t extend the same intelligence to matters of sexual assault.
Another dissimilarity is in the reaction to the crimes against Mukhtaran Mai and Kainat Soomro. Mukhtaran Mai’s case produced outrage amongst many members of society in Pakistan, and from human rights’ and women’s rights groups in the country and abroad. But there is an eerie silence when it comes to Kainat Soomro. Where are the women’s rights’ groups, the human rights lawyers? Where are the international NGOs and the foreign journalists now? There are no offers of financial support for this young girl, no book deals for her autobiography. What is it about Kainat Soomro’s case that is keeping them away?
This is not a competition about who was the bigger victim, or who suffered more. It’s not about who has a more effective team of advisers, or who needed publicity at that moment in time and thought that this was an effective way to gain it, by championing the cause of a wronged woman. It isn’t even about the idea that nobody cares about a Sindhi girl who has been violated, and still faces threats from the criminals who were responsible. But I think it’s significant that there’s nobody from the establishment to be by Kainat Soomro’s side, except for Marvi Memon, the Sindhi PML-Q MNA who sat in dharna with Kainat and her family at the Karachi Press Club, and contacted Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who then arranged for police security to accompany the family to Dadu, where they buried their dead brother and son.
Perhaps we have grown comfortable with the idea of women as public victims. We were always used to the idea of women as victims in private, pointed at and whispered about shamefully, used as examples to scare our girls about the dangers of independence and immorality. After Mukhtaran Mai’s case, in which her face was on the pages of every newspaper, we were temporarily shocked, felt pity for her and other women who have been assaulted. We saluted her courage in speaking out, in casting off the veil of dishonour, and working to educate girls about women’s rights and gender issues. But then we expected her to go away, to get off the front pages, so that we could go back to our comfortable imaginary world, where women do not get raped and if they do, they certainly don’t say anything about it.
And now that Kainat Soomro is the one who’s speaking out, who isn’t hiding in shame because she was the victim of a crime that offends our sensibilities, we don’t have the time to listen. Didn’t we solve this problem when we cried for Mukhtaran Mai? Kainat Soomro should be grateful that we aren’t demanding she commit suicide in order to make us all feel better. At least, that’s what I think our silence really means.
binashah@yahoo.com
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