Tag: Sexual crime

  • Police find Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman guilty in madrassa sexual abuse case

    Police find Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman guilty in madrassa sexual abuse case

    According to the case record and police report submitted in court, Mufti Aziz-ur-Rehman was found guilty of raping a madrassa student in Lahore, reports Samaa.

    The suspect’s bail plea at the Cantt Court on Tuesday was heard by Judicial Magistrate Rana Arshad. The investigation officer requested that his bail request should be rejected.

    Magistrate Arshad summoned the lawyers of both parties for arguments and has adjourned the hearing till September 10.

    Previously, Mufti Aziz confessed that the video was not fake and said that he was secretly filmed by his student.

    The victim in his statement said that Mufti Aziz accused him of cheating in his exams after which he was banned from taking the exams for three years. Mufti Aziz then asked the student to “make him happy” in order to get the ban lifted.

    When the video of Mufti Aziz’s sexual abuse went viral on social media, he was arrested on June 16.

  • ‘Men should lower their gaze’: Yashma Gill on rising sexual crimes against women

    ‘Men should lower their gaze’: Yashma Gill on rising sexual crimes against women

    Actor Yashma Gill has blamed the “400 men” for the mob attack on Ayesha Akram at Minar-e-Pakistan.

    The Pyar Ke Sadqay actor recently appeared on Gup Shup with FUCHSIA and talked about the increasing crimes against women in Pakistan, particularly Ayesha’s mob attack. “Why are we victim blaming the survivor? Those men had the free will to chose between right and wrong and they chose wrong,” stated the actor.

    “She (Ayesha) may have planted some men but some might have the conscience not to do that,” added the Qurban actor.

    She went on to say that some of her co-actresses said that Ayesha must have thought about her dressing before going there, “I stopped them right there and said that if women are to cover themselves then men should also lower their gaze according to Islam.”

    The Alif star further said that nobody can say that she incited men to assault her, one should know whether somebody incites you, try not to be incited by that individual.

    On the work front, Yashma can be seen currently in ARY’s Aazmaish opposite Fahad Sheikh, Furqan Qureshi and Kinza Hashmi.

  • Bakhtawar Bhutto demands men be banned from public spaces

    Bakhtawar Bhutto took to Twitter to express her outrage, demanding that all men should be banned from public spaces.

    In a series of tweets, Multimedia Journalist Sabin Agha shared the horrors of her experience of being harassed at Mazar-e-Quaid in Karachi on August 14, a few years ago.

    “Some 100 odd frustrated boys & men attacked me & my cameraman at Mazar-e-Quaid. My cameraman and his camera were shoved back & forth/ but I was manhandled. I was groped on every part of my body. My hair was pulled from the back & both sides. My clothes & dupatta were pulled by men,” wrote Sabin.

    “At one point someone tried to wrap my dupatta around my neck to choke me, all the while groping me with hysterical laughs and every existing cussword hurled at me,” further added Sabin.

    “I went to police van standing at the doorstep of Mazar Quaid, who watched the entire episode. I asked them why did they not come to help. Police response: “bibi hum 4 hay aur wo 150. Hum kese rok sktay thy. Ap ayee kiyun [Madam, we were four in number and they 150 in total. How could we possibly have stopped them? Why did you come here?],” wrote Sabin.

    Reacting to the journalist’s experience angry Baktawar Bhutto demanded that “all men should be banned from public places”.

    “Another harrowing experience – witnessed by police who refused to help despite their ability to call for backup as well as use weapons to disperse the crowd. We need more women to safeguard women,” wrote Bakhtawar.

    Recently, three women were harassed in three separate incidents on Aug 14, which sparked outrage on social media.

  • Rape apology is not ‘common sense’

    Rape apology is not ‘common sense’

    A video of a TV talk show host recently went viral in which he was comparing women with ‘toffees. He said that if you left an unwrapped candy on the road for an hour, nobody would eat it because it would have been attacked by viruses, bacteria, germs, flies, mosquitoes, etc. He made this comparison in response to the backlash that Prime Minister Imran Khan is facing after his recent interview where he blamed women for sexual violence. When journalist Jonathan Swan asked PM Khan about sexual violence in Pakistan and if he thought that what women wear has any effect and if that’s part of this temptation, PM replied: “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots. It’s common sense.”

    It is not common sense to blame the victim for a sexual crime; it is not common sense to blame women for being raped instead of blaming the real culprit, i.e. the rapist; it is not common sense to tell women what to wear; it is not common sense that the prime minister of a country would issue a rape apology instead of responding to the question by simply saying that no, women’s clothes have nothing to do with rapes or sexual crimes. Period. When the prime minister tries to equate women’s clothes, it is not just irresponsible but also has far-reaching consequences. When people question victims of sexual assault about what they were wearing, it is an affront to all the survivors, dead and alive. It was also quite sad to see three women MNAs defending PM’s rape apology. We understand that it is their job to defend their party and leadership but it would have been better if they had just remained quiet if they could not condemn this statement.

    PM Khan’s comments are not just triggering for all victims and survivors of sexual abuse but are downright insulting. What was a six-month old baby wearing when they were raped, what was little Zainab wearing when she was raped, what was the boy in the madrassa wearing that ‘tempted’ Mufti Aziz, what were dead women wearing in their graves when someone dug out their bodies to rape them? Rape is not about lust. It is about power, humiliation, control. Rape is a violent crime, which has nothing to do with the way anyone dresses. In the United States, a Federal Commission on Crime of Violence study found that most convicted rapists could not remember what their victims were wearing. This is just a myth perpetuated by many, including the TV talk show host who thinks women are somehow candies or PM Khan who thinks women’s clothes somehow tempt men unless those men are ‘robots’ who do not act after being ‘tempted’.

    Rape apology in any form is unacceptable. We hope that the PM will realise his mistake and not repeat it because such comments do not make women feel safe, at all.