A teenager visits a hospital in Faisalabad for routine tests and finds herself being given an anaesthetic to be raped while she was unconscious. Elsewhere in Attock, another eight-year-old lands in the intensive care unit because he dared resist a sexual assault.
Two out of three who gang-raped a polio worker in Jacobabad last week still remain at large. Which of these befitting yet nauseating snapshots of where Pakistan stands in its provision of safety to all those who call it their home could be used by the patriarchal forces as they strive to perpetuate the culture of impunity surrounding rape? Which of the victims would the society prod and poke, claiming “they asked for it?”
To be fair, you only need to pick up a newspaper and there it is, yet another reminder of how routine of an instance gender-based violence has become in a country that ironically takes great pride in its family-oriented values.
Sometimes (not always), we find a certain degree of shock and outrage as pressure from civil society forces police to take immediate steps but even then, most are driven by optics. More often than not, justice is an ivory tower, a laissez-faire idea, as despite all hopes for the victims getting closure for the unimaginable horrors endured see themselves being put on trial instead of the accused.
The shamefully low conviction rate in reported cases of sexual violence, which only forms the tip of the iceberg, does not evoke much confidence in the credibility of the system, in turn, empowering countless other demons to do whatsoever to whosoever because of an extremely simple explanation: they can.
Those sitting in powerful positions get offended by inconvenient truths highlighting how a woman is raped every two minutes in Pakistan. What they fail to comprehend is that instead of a selective outrage at dark numbers, all of us should collectively hang our heads in shame because of the deeply-embedded rape culture. Historic legislation won’t amount to much without a strong commitment to justice for every victim. *
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