A Pakistani-American family living in the United States of America (USA) has been sentenced on Monday to serve between five to twelve years in jail for physical violence and forced labor inflicted upon a Pakistani woman. Federal authorities have described this case as the ‘modern-day equivalence of slavery’.
As reported by US newspaper Richmond Times, the three defendants, matriarch Zahida Aman along with her two sons, Mohammad Rehan Chaudhri (49) and Mohammad Nauman Chaudhri (55), had used physical labor, verbal abuse and coercion against the survivor, Maria Butt, to get her to serve thousands of hours of domestic labor ‘for 12 long years’, said federal authorities in a statement.
“Indeed, during the course of their illegal agreement and in furtherance of their criminal conspiracy, each defendant assaulted, verbally attacked and abused [the victim’s] children to carefully construct a climate of fear that continuously compelled her labor,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen Miller and Shea Gibbons revealed in a court statement.
Butt was married to Salman Chaudhri, the eldest son of Aman in January 2002 when she was living in Pakistan. She claimed that she had not met her husband before their marriage. After moving to the United States, Butt recalled her husband telling her that if she wanted to keep him happy, then she must fulfil the obligations of his family.
Shortly after moving to the US, Butt was called in a family meeting by Aman where the victim was asked to surrender her legal documents, including the jewlery gifted by her family, as well as a notebook listing the contact numbers of her family members back home.
Prosecutors note that due to this act, the survivor “had no legal documentation, assets of value or contact information for her family and friends within months of arriving in the United States. She was becoming completely dependent on the defendants for basic necessities and emotional support.”
After her arrival, the survivor was forced to perform an endless amount of housework which included cleaning bedrooms, wiping down the kitchen and, as prosecuters pointed out, had ‘become a robot of the house’ who basically had to respond to all of the requests of the family members.
Soon, the survivor was made to perform incredibly difficult tasks like moving the lawn with a push mover, hand-washing and line-drying area rugs, including painting the inside and outside of the family’s two-storey house. When she would refuse, the survivor was slapped or subjected to cruel punishments like in one instance, she was tied with rope and pushed down the stairs infrount of her children for simply using a family member’s phone to call her husband.
“As the type of work the defendants required [the victim] to perform intensified, so too did the coercive scheme they employed to compel her labor,” prosecutors said in the trial brief. “The defendants used a combination of coercive means, including physical assaults, verbal abuse, isolation, starvation and threats of deportation to create a climate of fear that compelled [the victim’s] labor,” prosecutors said.
The survivor’s husband, Salman Chaudhri, was not dtsying regularly in the family’s home, and had moved to Pennsylvania for his medical education and then to California to set up his practice. He got engaged to another woman in 2013. The survivor revealed that the husband did not take her, or their four children with him to California.
Prosecuters also revealed that the family also tried to separate the survivor from her children. They revealed that the children were encouraged to spit on their mother, and had been convinced that she was dangerous. The children were also belittled and punished if they would ever show any kindness to their mother.
In May 2016, the survivor managed to escape with her brother from Pakistan and had filed a police case with Chesterfield County Police detective Laura Kay, after which the family members were placed under arrest.
“After two months of rebuilding her relationships with her family and gaining emotional courage, [the victim] contacted [her brother], who helped her leave the home,” prosecutors wrote. The survivor “subsequently gained full custody of her children, despite a contested custody battle with the defendants.”
Tag: abuses
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Pakistani-American family arrested for abuse, forced labor of woman
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VIDEO: Woman booked for abusing, threatening traffic warden
A case was registered against a woman who slapped and misbehaved with a traffic warden who stopped her for parking her car in a no-parking area in Lahore’s Liberty Market.
In a video doing rounds on social media, a traffic warden requests a woman not to park her car on the road as it is a no-parking area. In response, the unidentified woman started abusing and slapping the warden on his face and giving him threats.
The warden then could be seen calling women police constables to arrest the woman for violating traffic rules and hitting him. He filed a complaint at the Gulberg police station after which a case was registered.
According to reports, the incident took place two days ago when the woman had wrongly parked her car on a main road near the Liberty Market exit that resulted in a traffic jam. Warden Furqan asked her to park the car properly on the side. The woman started abusing and asked the warden to speak to her father. Upon his denial, the woman allegedly slapped the warden and escaped from the scene.
As the video went viral on social media, Chief Traffic Officer (CTO) retired Capt Syed Hammad Abid ordered raids for arresting the woman. A police team raided her house, but could not find her there. Her vehicle was detained.
However, a sessions court in Lahore granted bail to the woman today (on Thursday). The court directed the woman to deposit a surety bond of Rs50,000 to secure her bail.
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Ministry for HR introduces helpline for victims of domestic abuse
With everyone under lockdown, it is being feared that cases of domestic violence and abuse will spike in the coming days. It has already been reported that cases of abuse are on the rise in Europe. The stress caused by social isolation coupled with fears around job security and financial difficulties is exacerbating tensions and increasing the risk of domestic and sexual violence against women and children.
“For many people, their home is already not a safe place,” says a German federal association of women’s counselling centres and helplines.
The case in Pakistan is also similar. You may have read accounts of people relating stories of their domestic staff begging them to let them come to work because they are miserable at their homes and face abuse there.
Keeping this in mind, the Ministry of Human Rights has launched a helpline for those who are vulnerable or are facing any kind of abuse.
In a tweet, the ministry shared the numbers of helplines and wrote, “Lockdowns and quarantine measures often leave women and children vulnerable to domestic abuse and violence – which is known to rise during emergencies.”
“Our helpline is here to help you,” they added.
Last week, The Duchess of Cornwall, Camilla Parker Bowles, also extended her support and reached out to those who may be victims of domestic violence and abuse.
Meanwhile, according to a report in The Guardian, “Women and children who live with domestic violence have no escape from their abusers during quarantine, and from Brazil to Germany, Italy to China, activists and survivors say they are already seeing an alarming rise in cases of abuse.”
For example, in Hubei province, the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak, domestic violence reports to police more than tripled in one county alone during the lockdown in February, activists told local media.
AFP reported that in Spain, which has the second-worst outbreak in Europe after Italy, a 35-year-old mother of two was murdered by her partner last week in front of their children in the coastal province of Valencia.
France’s interior minister Christophe Castaner revealed that reports of domestic violence across the country have jumped by more than 30% since the country went into lockdown on March 17th. Castaner said that in Paris alone, cases were up by 36%.
Activists say the increased threat to women and children was a predictable side effect of the coronavirus lockdowns. According to them, increased abuse “is a pattern repeated in many emergencies, whether conflict, economic crisis or during disease outbreaks, although the quarantine rules pose a particularly grave challenge.”
Women rights activists across the world are demanding their governments not to overlook those most vulnerable in these situations and help them out in whichever way possible. However, they fear that if the lockdown continues, cases of domestic violence could reach unprecedented heights.
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VIDEO: Khalilur Rehman Qamar abuses journalist Marvi Sirmed on live TV
Writer and director Khalilur Rehman Qamar, who is not new to controversy and is rather infamous for his misogynist views both on and off the screen, has abused journalist and rights activist Marvi Sirmed on live television.
According to the details, Qamar on Tuesday appeared on a talk show to discuss the aftermath of a petition against the forthcoming Aurat March being trashed by the Lahore High Court (LHC). The petition calling the march “un-Islamic” with a ” hidden agenda to spread vulgarity” was wrapped up by the court that said it couldn’t be banned under the law of the land.
“First of all, the court has barred them [women marchers] from using filthy slogans like ‘mera jism, meri marzi’ [my body, my choice],” Qamar can be heard as saying in a video clip of the show doing rounds over the internet, in reference to the court’s order that participants of the march should “refrain from hate speech and immorality”.
Attempting to launch a tirade against the phrase, Qamar can then be heard as criticising Sirmed for using such slogans, to which the journalist reacts with murmuring the same that had led to a war of words over the internet after the slogan went viral following last edition of the annual Aurat March.
While some say the slogan ‘mera jism, meri marzi’ is “vulgar” and is used by women marchers in “an attempt to westernise the Pakistani society”, the marchers themselves say it pertains to “the right of choice and that to safety of women and even minor girls who are subjected to sexual assault in this very society”.
“Don’t interrupt!” the writer tells Sirmed in a rather aggressive tone, to which the rights activist once again chants the same slogan but in a louder voice.
“What is there in your body? Who the hell are you? Go take a look at your body… no man spits on you,” Qamar adds while also abusing Sirmed who continues to repeatedly chant “mera jism, meri marzi“.
WATCH VIDEO:
The third panellist, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl’s (JUI-F) Senator Maulana Faiz Muhammad, and the host of the television show can in the meantime be seen requesting Sirmed to stop talking and hear Qamar out.
With netizens losing it over the remarks made by Qamar and also calling out the host of the show for doing nothing to stop him, here’s what the anchor has to say:
Do you think the anchorperson could’ve stopped things from escalating? Let The Current know in the comments.
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VIDEO: Woman who threatened warden goes viral again for misbehaving with other women
A woman who was caught on camera threatening an on-duty traffic policeman after she violated traffic rule last year is back again. This time the same woman involved in an argument with some other women.
A video doing rounds on social media shows the woman fighting, abusing and calling other women ‘maasi’ in an insulting manner. While the faces of the other women are not visible, they can be heard saying that they recognise her face from her past activities that went viral in the news in November last year.
Previously, the woman identified as Sana was stopped by traffic warden in Karachi’s area of Khayaban-e-Shahbaz of DHA after she violated a signal rule upon which she started threatening and using foul language against the policeman who asked her to show her license or CNIC.