Disturbingly frequent reports in the press about women and girls being subjected to sexual assault and harassment show that the state continues to fail in it’s duty to protect female citizens. Most recently, a victim of harassment and groping opened up about her experience at a music festival in Lahore. The young woman alleges that she and her sister were first molested by a security guard, and later by other male attendees at the event. The details of the incident are shocking and underline how vulnerable women in Pakistan are in public spaces over here.
It is necessary that the authorities take some form of action against the organisers of the event for failing to ensure the safety of female attendees. However, even if they are slapped with a heavy penalty, it will still be a long time before this country will become a safe space for women.
In another incident, a Canadian expat reported being stalked and verbally harassed by two men. The perpetrators were eventually arrested by the police. However, justice can’t be said to have been served as they were pardoned by the victim. Whatever her reason may have been for pardoning her harassers, it is necessary that harassment of women and girls be treated as a crime against the state. Victims of harassment, molestation or rape should not have the option to pardon their victims.
Sadly, the two incidents are the least grizzly to have emerged in the press in the last two months. On April 14, a first-year university student was raped by the driver of a private college van and an accomplice in Layyah. The victim was left for dead before being found and hospitalised. She is currently in critical condition. Around the same time, another report emerged of an ASI being booked for raping a woman who had visited the police station in connection to a gang-rape FIR she had filed three months ago.
If this wasn’t upsetting enough, on March 29 a report emerged that three brothers from the capital territory had been arrested for repeatedly raping their teenage sister over a period of two years.
It seems women in this country aren’t safe in public, they aren’t safe in their homes and they aren’t safe from the men in uniform meant to protect them either. This is a disaster of endemic proportions and some sort of action needs to be taken immediately to get to the bottom of this problem and make Pakistan a safer space for all genders. *