The curious case of rape apologists

How are they the more guilty ones?

We, as Pakistanis, love to justify things. The more horrific an incident is, the more imaginative the justifications become. The extreme Right would justify systematic targeting of minorities by saying, “Well, Pakistan was founded for Muslims only, it was never meant to be a secular state”. Military takeovers are justified with the notion that the weak democracy in Pakistan has failed and one needs strong leaders to rule difficult people.

Similarly, rape, in Pakistan, on the rare occasions that it is discussed, is justified by, “the woman had it coming”. Or, the new hip phrase, “her parents should have taught her better”.

It is tragic that the rape and murder of the 11-year-old minor Shahzadi has not invoked mass outrage, especially when the memory of the brutal rape and murder of a young Indian girl across the border is still fresh in our minds.

Little Shahzadi went to her tutor’s house one afternoon and never returned. When her burnt body was discovered in the Industrial Area of the capital city, further sick details were revealed about the couple that was behind the travesty.

Mehak Qaisar, a student of Mass Communication, in cahoots with her boyfriend invited the girl to her house for tuitions. When the child went, her boyfriend, Ibrar, tried to force himself upon the child. In the ensuing struggle, Ibrar broke the girl’s neck. The rapist, in a fit of panic, then stuffed the girl in a sack, smoothly drove past security check posts in the city, took the unconscious girl to his house and decided to finish job. Attempting to rape a child was not bad enough for the man. He had to finish the job, of course, by molesting an unconscious, helpless child with a broken neck. Upon getting whatever sick pleasure that he was seeking from the intercourse, he then strangled the child, stuffed her body back in the sack, took her to the Industrial Area and set fire to the body to remove the fingerprints.

When he was arrested a few days later, Ibrar and his girlfriend, confessed to several such systematic and planned rapes and murders. One shockingly involved the daughter of a serving superintendent of police.

Ibrar justified his sick fantasies to Mehak by saying he had a ‘type’ of AIDS that could only be cured through intercourse. I am unsure if Mehak had access to Google but any girl with a bit of common sense would have looked it up first. Naturally, that means that it was not a problem of ignorance – she was a Mass Communication student after all – it was two sick minds with twisted fantasies operating in an alliance they called love.

These are two individuals involved in several heinous crimes. There are hundreds of other such cases. This distinctly points to many social problems in the country.

Instead of an outright condemnation of the murder and rape of the SP’s daughter by Ibrar and Mehak, I have heard an educated individual say, “She was associated with bad company, her parents should have taught her better”. This is the equivalent of saying, “women invite rape”. Who wants to be raped?

In the presence of a strong civic consciousness, not only would this rape have been protested on a wide scale, pressure groups would have called for proper affirmative action to curtail such incidents from ever happening again. But again, that requires the subject of rape to no longer be a taboo. By sweeping horrific incidents like these under the carpet, the problem is only exacerbated.

Rape apologists are often more terrifying than the rapists themselves. While they are not rapists, they will raise an entire generation of young women who will continue to feel like it would be THEIR fault if they got raped, not the man’s. In effect, they are accomplices in perpetuating a culture where violence against women is acceptable, normalised and justified.

Economic and political disparities in the country have also led to the marginalisation of women and making them susceptible to violence in the first place. Pakistani society as a whole is obsessed with ‘honour’. The feudal class leads this perception with an irrational infatuation with the concept of honour that somehow is only related to their women. This has been reinforced by Islamic conservatism and the mass media itself – often when the two act together, but just as often when these two act separately.

According to a report by the Awaz Foundation Centre for Development, as many as 2,713 cases of violence against women have been reported in 15 districts of southern Punjab since January 2012. At least 150 of these were reportedly rape cases. Just Punjab; imagine how much worse it would be in other parts of the country. One cannot be too sure, as once again, the stigma associated with pursuing the rape cases is often a deciding factor in the case being wiped out from our record books.

Who does it serve, when rape cases are not pursued, in the presence of an apparently independent judiciary and an apparently active police force? Why are parents too embarrassed to ask for justice for their daughters and what makes them act violently against their own children? There are those who are afraid of fighting the dominant classes over rape, there are others who are ashamed of pursuing these cases because of a forced sense of honour and embarrassment. In the presence of such obvious lack of outrage, critique and debate, rape apologies ensue, making it easier for rapists to get their jobs done.

The writer is a staff member and a research analyst, and tweets at @aimamk