Honour killings

Honour killings
SHAKIR LAKHANI (KARACHI)

LETTER (July 25 2010): Three recent news items prove that as far as women are concerned, we're still living in the Stone Age. The first, about a woman being gang-raped, should not shock us anymore. This is the kind of incident that happens regularly, so much so that it would be shocking if it didn't occur on any given day. Yet it proves that the poor women in rural areas are treated worse than animals. At least the females of other species are not raped by males!

The second item describes how a pregnant mother of six was first shot and then thrown into a canal by her brother because he suspected her of having an illicit affair with a relative. It wouldn't make any sense to tell these primitive men that there is a legal way to deal with adulterous women. In any case, who gave the man the right to kill his sister for any reason at all?

The third news item is heart-breaking. A woman of 50, the mother of eight, was gang-raped by five men against whom she complained to the police. Instead of giving comfort and sympathy to the woman, her son-in-law (whom she had brought up as her own son) killed her because "he could not stand peoples' taunts". So this is the kind of treatment our women get in this Islamic Republic! And some deeply religious Pakistanis I know have the gall to say that women have more rights than men in our country.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2010