Tag: rape apologist selected PM

  • Data: One year of rape cases in Pakistan

    Data: One year of rape cases in Pakistan

    Pakistan has been plagued by episodes of rape and abuse over the years that it has now become common to the extent that people have started normalising such acts.

    Back in 2002, Mukhtaran Mai’s gang-rape was one of the most horrifying gang-rape incidents that were reported.

    Another major incident that took place in 2014 was the Layyah gang-rape case, where a 20-year-old girl after being gang-raped, was found hanging from a tree. Such inhumane incidents haven’t stopped even now.

    A horrendous incident occurred on September 9, 2020, when a woman ran out of fuel on a motorway near Lahore. She was in the car with her two children.

    Two men stole her money and the jewellery she had on her. They then raped her in front of her two children in a nearby field and escaped.

    The incident sparked national outrage but what happened next? Before the arrest of the two culprits, questions like “Why was she out on the motorway so late without a brother or husband? Why didn’t she check her gas tank before leaving the house? And if she had to travel, why didn’t she take the more public GT Road route?” were asked because, sadly, in our country ‘getting raped’ is the woman’s fault. Apparently, a woman gets raped because ‘she was driving alone, on the wrong road, at the wrong time, in the wrong place’.

    Later, the motorway rapists were sentenced to death but rape cases continued to rise in Pakistan.

    On October 12, 2020, our team started counting rape cases on a daily basis from 13 different sources, which included these newspapers: Dawn, The News, The Express Tribune, The Nation, Pakistan Today, Daily Times, Nawa-e-Waqt, Daily Jang. And from these websites: ARY News, Geo News Samaa News Dunya News Aaj News.

    It is to be noted that the given stats only include the reported incidents, not the ones that go unreported.

    During the process, we have included reported rape cases of girls, boys, women, men and transgenders. Moreover, we have divided the rape cases province-wise, according to which Punjab till date has the highest number of rape cases, i.e. 936 rape cases and 44 attempted incidents.

    It has been a year since we have started posting our rape template daily to analyse the record of reported rape cases. We have collected the data of the entire year (October 12, 2020 to October 12, 2021) and prepared slides of reported cases of each month provinces-wise.

    Provinces Categorisation:

    Sindh

    Till date, Sindh has recorded a total of 60 reported rape cases in which 10 are attempted incidents. 11.6 per cent of cases were reported in the month of April and August as per the graph.

    Punjab

    Punjab has recorded a total of 936 reported rape cases in which 44 are attempted incidents until now. 13 per cent of cases were reported in August.

    Islamabad

    The capital has recorded a total of 13 reported rape cases which no attempted cases until now. The reported cases are relatively low as compared to other provinces’ data. However, 38.46 per cent of rape cases were reported in June this year.

    Balochistan

    Balochistan has reported a total of 11 reported rape cases. Most of the months show zero reported rape cases, according to the graph.

    KPK

    Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has reported a total of 20 reported rape cases of which 2 were attempted incidents. The numbers throughout the months are quite the same.

    Deaths (province-wise)

    As per the graph, the death rate was high in the month of January i.e.14.5 per cent.

    Numbers of the recorded cases after the highlighted incidents of 2021

    After the following incidents, we noticed an increase in the reporting of rape cases.

    Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman: sexual assault case

    On June 17, police registered a criminal complaint against Mufti Aziz after a male student accused him of sexual abuse. In the aftermath of a viral graphic video that showed Mufti engaging in sexual intercourse with the male student, who was the victim, the action was taken against Mufti Aziz. After the incident, we noticed an increase of 10.7 per cent in the reporting of rape cases in the month of June.

    Usman Mirza’s sexual assault on a couple

    Usman Mirza was arrested on July 7. He was seen torturing and assaulting a couple. He was also seen stripping naked a woman in the video. The video sparked outrage across Pakistan. After the petrifying incident, an increase of 9 per cent was observed in the reporting of rape cases in the month of July.

    Noor Mukadam’s murder case

    On July 20, Noor Mukadam, daughter of former Pakistani diplomat Shaukat Mukadam, was raped, beheaded and murdered, in a posh neighbourhood of Islamabad in July. Noor’s murder led to nationwide protests. After her murder, as per the reported cases we have monitored, there was an increase of 12.6 per cent in the month of August.

    There are many more cases that are still unreported due to various reasons.

    According to The News, official statistics obtained from the Police, Law, and Justice Commission of Pakistan, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Women’s Foundation, and provincial welfare agencies in 2020 revealed that there are at least 11 rape cases reported in Pakistan every day with over 22,000 rape cases reported to the police across the country in the last six years.

  • Sympathising with the rapist

    Sympathising with the rapist

    My first introduction to the concept of victim blaming came about through an American TV show. Watching it on Star Network in the late 90s, I saw an episode where a lawyer struts about court carrying a slinky black dress a rape victim had been wearing when she was assaulted, blaming her choice of attire for being attacked. He wins the case. By the end of the episode, the victim had committed suicide, the assaulter was honing in on another girl and the lawyer was in deep remorse.

    If only real life was as neatly wrapped up as fiction is.

    Remorse is a feeling alien to Prime Minister Imran Khan. He is the ultimate alpha male, the kind that hunkers down on his beliefs, however much to the contrary the evidence may be. For such men, defending their statements becomes a matter of pride. Any admission that they were wrong or are better informed now would be a blow to their self-respect. Steadfastness to the wrong ideas is problematic even for a layman. For the prime minister of a country where sexual assault is almost endemic, it is disastrous.

    This stubbornness to continue to talk about what women wear stems from a deeper problem.

    Victim blaming is the easy way out for a national leader. He or she blames the victim for not being careful enough, or for not wearing the right clothes or flaunting their wealth, thus placing the onus of in ensuring a crime free society on the people. It absolves the ruler form the messier business of actually preventing crime. In Pakistan, that would have entailed wrangling in the mud with uncaring law enforcing agencies such as the police, the mine-trapped reckoning with the judiciary on inability to convict rapists, the stressful task of finding more funds for medical kits and trained personnel in public hospitals and the bureaucratic nightmare of somehow ensuring that all victims get legal representation. This is just too much work.

    Much more difficult than selling the utopian fantasy of a just and fair society where the consequences of your actions carry retribution from your fellow citizens.

    A less discussed aspect of Imran Khan’s statement is that in talking about women’s attire, he perhaps unintentionally but most assuredly displays empathy for the perpetrators. In effect, we are asked to examine the rapist’s feelings. We are required to take a deeper look at how he is not a “robot”. We are expected to understand how he was overwhelmed by his desires. We are called upon to reflect upon the society in which he lives. We must think of what compels that man to attack. The rapist almost becomes a victim himself, a casualty of the fierce desires that overtook him.

    There is no other way of putting this: we are being asked to be sympathetic to the rapist’s predicament.

    The whole saga of rape then becomes the simple matter of attributing blame to a man’s characteristics. External matters such as ensuring justice and punishment, well within the prime minister’s powers, simply fall to the wayside. The government is not responsible if a man could not control himself. But Bollywood and Hollywood surely are.

    Too often, assault turns into an inquisition about the victim. What they were wearing, what time they had ventured out, what they were doing on that particular day and how they had lived their life till then. From the most developed countries to the least , the conversation about a high-profile rape or assault centres around a victim’s personal life. The personal choices that led them to this point, if you may.

    We saw this when former CCPO Lahore, Umer Sheikh, blamed the victim of the motorway rape for not checking the fuel in her car and for selecting a deserted highway to drive home. After much uproar, Umer Sheikh apologised for his comments. Imran Khan has yet to do so. Anyone waiting for “I am sorry” from the prime minister will wait in vain.

    Alpha males do not apologise.

  • ‘Hesab tu dono ko he dena ho ga’: Nausheen Shah lauds PM Khan’s statement

    ‘Hesab tu dono ko he dena ho ga’: Nausheen Shah lauds PM Khan’s statement

    Nausheen Shah has lauded Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent statement and shared that everyone should follow the teachings of Quran.

    Read more- Meesha Shafi and Saheefa Jabbar express their disappointment with PM Imran Khan’s comment on rape cases

    Taking to her Instagram stories, Shah said: “Perda kerna humaray Islam mei hai aur is mei humari he behtari hai.”

    The Dugdugi actress added, “Kero ya na kero woh ap ki merzi. I am not saying that men will be forgiven. No! Hesab tu dono ko he dena ho ga.” Shah said that she is not judging anyone as this right only belongs to Allah. She added that this is being ordered by Him and we should follow that.

    Concluding her post, she wrote: “Imran Khan we are proud of you.”

    Earlier this week, the Sadqay Tumhare writer Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar also supported the PM, saying: “I salute PM Imran Khan over his statement. Those against him are basically against the teachings of Islam.”

    https://twitter.com/khalilUrRQ/status/1407816773827805186?s=20