Daily Times

After the horrendous rape and murder of Zainab occurred in Kasur this past January, a spate of harrowing incidents of violence against girls and women occurred in Sindh. 9-year-old Samina Jarwar left her home in the Ayub Colony area to buy sweets on April, 24 and the next day, her dead body was found floating in a drain near Tayyab Hotel. The preliminary medical examination ascertained that the minor girl was subjected to attempted rape and the cause of her death was reported to be asphyxia.

The Larkana Police arrested 27 suspects after the Sindh High Court Chief Justice Ahmed Ali Shaikh took suo motu notice of the incident. Two of these suspects later confessed before the media that they had kidnapped the innocent girl with the intention of sexually assaulting her.

In Larkana’s Kanga village, the horrific killing of a pregnant local singer, 24-year-old Samina Sindhu also occurred in April. While performing at a ceremony, she was shot dead for refusing to sing a song while standing on the stage by Tariq Ahmed Jatoi, a feudal lord.

A little girl was raped and murdered in Orangi Town, Karachi last month. The heinous crime sparked violent protests to condemn the incident. A young girl, moreover was allegedly gang raped in a field outside her village in Khanpur, Shikarpur in the last week of April.

These inhumane incidents in which girls and women fall prey to the barbarism of men are merely the tip of the iceberg. Countless similar incidents occurring in far flung areas of the province are not even reported by the mainstream media.

Last year, the Women Development Department in the Government of Sindh formed a provincial commission and district level committees consisting of sociologists, psychologists, and civil society activists to prevent violence against women and child marriages. The department has not even held a single meeting to share, discuss and to find solutions to the problems women and girls have been grappling with in Sindh.

The department, moreover, has simply been cataloguing the incidents of sexual violence that occur in the province without taking any practical steps to prevent this violence. The department has been making fake reports about organizing workshops, seminars and other events in all districts, and has embezzled millions of rupees annually. The department needs to be functionalised.

The Centre for Peace and Development Initiative reported that in Pakistan, women and girls are the victims of heinous crimes against them on a daily basis. In 2017, around 274 women were murdered in the name of honour, 206 were gang-raped, 2840 raped, while 681 were killed.

Last year, Sindh witnessed 2934 incidents of violence against women and girls. At least 57 women and girls were killed in the name of honour, 251 were murdered, 156 were raped and 47 were gang raped in the province. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s 2011 report, one woman in Sindh is raped every day.

To prevent violence against women (VAW) and to eliminate this violence from the province, the Sindh government has come up with highest number of women protection laws over the last two decades, but regrettably, the government has completely failed to implement these laws. The shocking fact is that influential people such as landlords, industrialists, and politicians interfere in cases to help criminals escape punishments.

The monstrous crimes perpetrated against women and girls not only creates obstructions in their own development, but Pakistan’s population as a whole

In most incidents of VAW, influential persons have been found to be involved. Thus, a lack of implementation of these laws is one of the significant factors responsible for augmenting the incidents of rapes, gang-rapes, killings of women and young girls in the province. This is why Sindh is said to be the worst province in terms of violence against women on a per capita basis, with 61 crimes occurring per every one million people.

These monstrous crimes carried out against women and girls not only create obstructions in their development but also badly affect half of Pakistan’s population. The crimes that occur at one place spread shockwaves throughout the region, which generates fear among women, girls and parents.

As a result, many concerned parents avoid sending their daughters to schools, colleges, universities and to work places. This naturally damages the social, educational and the economic life of women and girls.

Keeping in view this startling and damaging state of affairs, the Sindh government must ensure the implementation of the women protection laws it has enacted. This will ensure the dispensation of justice to the victims of sexual harassment. Deserving victims and their families should also be provided with financial and legal help and support.

Courts, moreover, should hand out severe punishments according to the law to killers and to rapists for kidnapping, raping and for murdering women without succumbing to any form of pressure. Women who have leading and key positions in the PPP, the ruling party in Sindh, like MNA Faryal Talpur, Aseefa Bhutto Zardari and Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari can play a pivotal role in this regard.

The writer is an academic, and can be reached on Twitter @ARShykh

Published in Daily Times, May 9^th 2018.