Pakistan: Marriage & murder

We have turned into a nation of brutalized beings unmoved by death. Family members of the ill-fated Farzana Iqbal may have been guilty of stoning her to death outside the Lahore High Court Tuesday. Her unborn child died with her. But the fact also is that many people in the crowded LHC area stood and watched as she was pelted with stones by over a dozen persons linked to her family, including her brothers and her father, who has handed himself in to police. No one, it appears, attempted to intervene as a helpless woman was first fired upon and then hit with bricks as she fell to the ground. Farzana Iqbal’s ‘crime’ was no different to that of many other women across the country. Engaged to a cousin, the young woman from Faisalabad, had instead chosen to marry a man of her own choice. Her father had filed a case of abduction against Iqbal. This was being contested before the court by the couple when Farzana was torn away from her husband – and publicly put to death. While at least 1,000 women die each year on the grounds of ‘honour’ according to women’s rights organizations, stoning to death in this fashion is uncommon.

The end result though is the same. Another woman is dead, there is every possibility that the murderers may escape scot free. The law in use in our land allows family members of a victim to accept blood money and allow the perpetrators to walk away free. Since ‘honour’ killings are often planned within families, the law comes in very useful when a woman is killed. This must be prevented in Farzana’s case. A horrific crime took place in the middle of one of our biggest cities. Scores witnessed it at close hand. If those who hurled one brick after another at Farzana, inflicting fatal head injuries, are able to get away with what they did, a terrible precedent will be set. The lives of other women will be endangered. This can simply not be permitted. The barbaric act that took place outside the LHC must lead to safeguards being set up to protect women. It is the duty of all of us as citizens to prevent our enfeebled hold on what is left of civilization in our country from totally slipping away and instead attempt to create an order where greater justice can prevail and the weak are not simply beaten to death on the streets, with no one attempting to protect them, as happened to Farzana Iqbal even as she sought to seek protection from the law.