More and more Pak women fight back to end harrowing marriages

Eighteen-year-old Nasim of Qasur went to court to get her marriage dissolved after her husband and mother-in-law forced her to sleep with another man to pay off a huge debt.

Similarly, Razia sought legal help after her twice-married husband of four days thrashed her for not getting Rs 50,000 from her parents. When the frightened girl ran away, her husband reported to the police that she had fled with his Rs 50,000.

The two cases are among several cited by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) which says an increasing number of Pakistani women, even those from the low-income groups and largely illiterate, are becoming less willing to resign themselves to their fate and are seeking legal redressal to end harrowing marriages.

About 3000 such cases were pending in Lahore courts in August 1996, says the latest report of the commission titled State of Human Rights in 1996.

Of the nearly 1000 women who appeared in Lahore's courts during 1996, as many as 70 per cent were there seeking dissolution of their marriage, it says.

In a majority of the cases, the plea was that the husband was a non-earning wastrel, a drug addict or/ and was forcing the wife into flesh trade. There were also instances of the wife having discovered after marriage that the husband was already married or that he had only married to grab the woman's property.

The report observes that family disputes were subjected to customary court delays which prolonged the agony of the woman involved. A recent case was that of Zainab Noor whose brutal torture by her husband had attracted the instant attention of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto who had sent her abroad for treatment. Yet the case of dissolution of her marriage took a full 18 months to be decided.

Pakistan's law provides for registration of all marriages and divorces. However, according to the report, the provision came to be criminally abused mostly to the detriment of women. In one instance in Lahore, nearly a half of the 300 nikahnamas (wedding certificates) produced before the civil courts were fake.

Such fake marriages proved handy for men out for temporary sex or with designs to deceive the bride out of property or other valuables or to perpetrate some vendetta on the girl's family, it says.

One racket reported in Lahore involved a gang of lawyers and touts, (marriage brokers) acting together to deceive young girls into phony marriages. Some of the 20,000 registered brokers in the city reportedly made a thriving side-business of their notary powers, it adds.

The report cites several other anti-woman laws, saying the gender bias was direct in some and implied in others.

It says Article 17 of qanoon-i-shahadat (law of evidence) provides that for financial or future obligation any instrument drawn up shall be attested by two men or one man and two women. Thus the evidence of a woman for this purpose is reduced to one half of that of a man.

In cases of rape, the proof required, other than confession of the accused himself, is the testimony of four truthful Muslim adult males who have been witness to the act. ''In admitting only males as witnesses, the law became discriminatory. And by requiring four male eyewitnesses to the act it made rape impossible to be punished,'' says the report. No such punishment has ever been given in the 17 years of the law's existence, it adds.

The evidence law also loaded the dice against the rape victim. She would lose the case if it was shown that she was generally of immoral character. Thus the defence concentrated on sowing doubts in the court's mind about the character of the victim -- the principal reason for victims being averse to going to court, says the report.

It says discrimination was also made part of the law on payment of compensation for a death caused. The share of women heirs was to be half that of the male.

The report observes that customs are harder to break than laws and some of the customs range from being physically tyrannical to socially repressive. One such evil is karo kari, widely prevalent in upper Sindh and in varying degrees in Punjab and Balochistan. Karo kari says that it is the duty of family members to put anyone suspected of adultery to instant death. The law has been abused as women have been killed in the name of karo kari, particularly if there was some gain to be had by their death, says the report.

According to the report, the Sindh government had given a conservative estimate of karo kari-related deaths during the year. It had informed the provincial assembly at the end of August 1996 that a total of 354 persons died of karo kari in two years.

But the report says that a newspaper survey had placed the figure for 1996 alone at over 300. In Punjab too every third woman killed in domestic violence during the year was done so on suspicion of bad character.

UNI