KARACHI: The look on the young girl's face in this Pakistan side street is alarming. She looks up and down the street before telling of her secret spot to kiss her boyfriend. “If they found out I would just be another statistic and be dead because everyone just assumes if you are kissing you must be having sex and dishonoring your family,” 18-year-old Aisha told Bikyamasr.com as she retraced her early morning meeting detour en route to school in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi. She's lucky, her family is letting her go study in the United States next year, where she says, while blushing, “at least there they won't know if I am kissing boys.” But the reality in Pakistan for many girls and women is even the hint of “dishonor” or “illicit activities” with the other gender can result in their murder by family. According to the country's top human rights body, over 900 women and girls were killed in 2011 in what is known as an honor crime. “At least 943 women were killed in the name of honor, of which 93 were minors,” said the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in its annual report. Among the victims were 7 Christians and two Hindus. The Commission said this is up from the 791 “honor killings” in 2010. Another 4,500 women were targets of domestic violence last year, the rights group added. Among the acts included as resulting in “honor killings” are marrying someone regarded as “unsuitable,” sex before marriage, demanding divorce, a woman (married or unmarried) being raped, or even as small as calling a radio station to ask for a song to be played on air, or as in Aisha's case, a girl seen talking to a boy. Among those killed last year, the HRCP reported that the death toll from 2011 included 595 women who were suspected of conducting “illicit relations,” meaning allegedly having sex before marriage of carrying on extramarital affairs, while another 219 paid were murdered for marrying without the family's permission. “It is a fear we all live with and we must be very careful what we do as women in Pakistan,” added a sober Aisha about the reality of dating and being seen with boys in the country. “Throughout the year, women were callously killed in the name of ‘honor' when they went against family wishes in any way, or even on the basis of suspicion that they did so,” the HRCP stated. “Women were sometimes killed in the name of ‘honor' over property disputes and inheritance rights.” With the situation worsening, the Pakistan government has said it will attempt to implement tougher penalties for crimes of honor in the country, but it faces an uphill battle among the conservative elements of the country. Self-proclaimed progressive Sheikh Osama Othman, who runs a small mosque in central Karachi, told Bikyamasr.com that “in order for this kind of crime to end, we have to change social attitudes toward women and sex.” He pointed out that recent Internet studies have shown Pakistan to be among the top searchers for “sex” online, which he says shows that the country is living a double-standard. “Look, I am all in support and I preach that we should refrain from sexual intimacy until marriage, but this does not mean we cannot kiss our boyfriend and girlfriend, or walk in the street hand in hand,” he continued. “And in Pakistan, if a man has sex with women, they are not punished or killed, but if a woman is seen with a man, she has that threat. It is not Islamic and it is not the way of Muslim thinking,” he argued. But he may be in the minority, and with the number of women being killed for their reported actions, and rumors of their behavior, Pakistan faces an uphill battle that is tough to battle. Aisha knows this first-hand. “My brother once saw me and threatened to tell my relatives that I kissed a boy. Thankfully he didn't, but for days I waited to be hurt or worse. This fear drives many women here to never return when we go abroad for school, but we are the lucky ones with money,” she said. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/umq4T Tags: featured, Honor Killings, Karachi, Pakistan, Women Section: Editor's choice, Features, Human Rights, Latest News, Pakistan, South Asia, Women
