Pakistan: Stoned To Death: ''Awaiting Justice''

It took two days for the Prime Minister to take notice of the brutal murder of Farzana Parveen outside the Lahore High Court. It took another day for the Chief Justice to do the same, and he has given forty eight hours to the Punjab IG forty to file a report. The government is seemingly looking to speed things up, and has moved the case to the anti-terrorist court. Four suspects have been arrested, including her father who turned himself in after he was done stoning his own daughter in broad daylight. International coverage of the incident, coupled with mass outrage has led the government to display that some effort is being made to do something unprecedented for cases like this in Pakistan; work towards providing justice. If only all the other cases of rape, mutilation and murder of women (most of which go unreported) provoked similar feelings of urgency from the state, then this issue would not have been as widespread.

The arrest of four suspects should be lauded considering honour killing cases are rarely ever reported, and even those that are do not make it to court, but over twenty people were involved in this heinous attack. Justice should be served to all those that participated, not just those that have been apprehended so far. The perpetrators are not the only ones that need to be punished, however. The police that stood and watched this happened share the blame, and their failure to protect Farzana Parveen cannot be ignored. The police of Pakistan does not view most of the attacks on women as crimes worth stopping and this attitude enables people like Farzana’s family to abuse women with impunity. Domestic abuse, acid attacks, rapes and honour killings somehow do not qualify as crimes that should be dealt with by the mostly-misogynist police force.

Farzana’s murder is a shame for all of us. But the hundreds of crimes against women which go unanswered for annually are just as much of a disgrace, if not more merely because of the high frequency. The government and the media are both equally to blame for being indifferent to the plight of these women, and for letting them slip into anonymity. Pakistan needs to work towards ending the subjugation of women protecting their rights with as much diligence as those of men. Even if all those responsible for Farzana’s death pay for their crimes, our society will not be made any better for it if the same thing is going to happen again and again.