Sarah wages her war against rape

Sarah’s eyes are soft and sensitive. Her face is serene but with a solid strength, showing that she has braved through many experiences in life. Quiet and simple, Sarah Zaman, director of War Against Rape (WAR), has promised to battle this horrendous crime that has destroyed the lives of thousands of women and has weakened them perpetually.
To hear a student of Mass Communication landing up as a human rights activist is mildly surprising. But Sarah fits right into the role. It was definitely unplanned, which is why she started out working as a journalist in the current affairs magazine, Newsline. But since pay scales were not very high, she began looking for another job.
It was sheer chance, she says, and remembers that it was actually her fiancé (now her husband) who spotted an advertisement for a position in WAR, saying, “Here’s something interesting”.
“To be honest, I myself had been a victim of child abuse and molestation on various occasions as a little girl,” reveals Sarah openly, although many others would never come to terms with this trauma and still there are more who would not think it “right” to speak of. But this is what Sarah herself understands as an activist: in order to battle with the issue, one must first understand it and recognise it. Sarah’s experiences coincide with many young girls who have been abused or harassed as children, often by those they know and trust, but so ordinary is this sexual crime, that they never even realise that it was wrong and that they are victims of it.
There were other problems too. “I used to face a lot of discrimination for being a girl when I was little,” she says. “My male cousins ignored me at family get-togethers and because I didn’t have any sisters or female cousins, I always had a deep sense of alienation. I never grew up to have many male friends as my mother always cautioned me against it.” As Sarah grew up, the discrimination against her only became more blatant. However, with WAR, life changed. And new experiences, especially of seeing how much other women and girls suffer, helped shape Sarah and strengthened her will to fight for them.
“When I started, things were in a mess. Files were either missing or reports were never made. People used to ask me if WAR was still alive. Today, we can take pride in ourselves for providing relief to more women and children.”
“My first case at WAR was of a four year old girl who had been raped and tortured by her brother-in-law for over a month,” Sarah tells of the horrendous incident. “One of her eyes was missing and she suffered from fistula, beside all her broken bones and fractured ribs. I don’t think I was able to sleep for a fortnight because of it.” But it had to be fought, because if this took over, the little girl would never get justice. A fighter at heart, Sarah learnt to suppress it all to unselfishly fight for others.
When I met the Police Surgeon, I saw that the board carrying his name and designation on the building had been donated by WAR several years ago. But when we met, we spent more time discussing what we, as a foreign-funded organisation, can do for them in terms of capital investments and infrastructure than what we can do together on the issue of sexual violence,” Sarah reveals.
“The police and medico-legal procedures are just dreadful to say the least. I’ve had female medico-legal officers tell me that only girls under the age of 10 are raped. The rest all concoct stories and implicate ‘innocent, decent men’. I’ve had a Police officer tell me, ‘You don’t know that she is a bad woman. Any woman who says she was raped is shameless because she is declaring such things about herself publicly.’ This is the mentality we have to deal with.”
It is not so much about the procedures, she says; attitudes, belief systems and value judgments are the main problems.
Rape laws changed in 2006, but little has changed in terms of how victims are perceived, treated or cared for. The legal system acknowledges sexual violence only in its more aggravated forms, such as rape. Child molestation, eve teasing and exhibitionism are perceived to be mere “nuisances”, not crimes.
Of late, Sarah has been working on a policy paper for improving medico-legal documentation procedures. Winning cases has also helped WAR get recognised as an expert on rape.
Many feel that even the little that WAR has achieved in the past few years is a lot to be thankful for. This includes introduction of the Protection of Women Act 2006, Sexual Harassment Act 2008 and increase in the number of women police stations in Karachi, as well as pushing for more women in the police force.
“My only fear is that with such an increasingly volatile law and order situation in the city, women’s issues will only continue in not being given priority, especially by the state. Like in all conflict-ridden regions, here too, women are and will continue to be more vulnerable to violence and have little access to state services and legal recourse,” laments Sarah.
But if more women like Sarah come forward to fight, maybe this too might end sooner rather than later.