Lahore-Sialkot Motorway Gang Rape: Pakistanis Should Understand Rape Scars a Survivor’s Entire Life, Often Leading to Incurable PTSD
By Mehmal Sarfraz
29.09.20
A gang rape
took place earlier this month on the Lahore-Sialkot Motorway. A woman was
driving to Gujranwala from Lahore around 1 am when her car’s fuel ran out. She
called the Motorway helpline but was told that the Motorway Police had not
taken over it so far. For almost two hours, the woman waited for help, but it
didn’t come. And while she was waiting for help, two ‘robbers’ came, broke her
car’s windows, took out her children and started beating them up. When she ran
after the children, they raped her in front of her children. The police arrived
at the scene after the two vultures had fled.
Rape
is a crime that scars a survivor’s entire life. (Representational image)
Shutterstock
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As if it
were not terrifying enough that a woman with her children was stranded on the
Motorway for two hours without any help reaching her, after which she was raped
in front of her children, to add insult to injury, the Capital City Police
Officer Lahore, Umer Shaikh, resorted to victim-blaming. When the CCPO was
asked about the incident on a private television channel, he said that the
woman should not have left to travel after midnight, and if she had, she should
have taken a busier road (G.T. Road) instead of the Motorway, and that she
should have checked her car’s fuel tank. This statement sparked outrage across
the country. The hashtag, #RemoveCCPOLahore, trended on Twitter. Rallies were
taken out in some cities asking for the CCPO’s removal. The latter was least
bothered. Ministers in the government came to his defence and said he gave a
‘bad statement’ but that does not qualify for him to be removed. The CCPO
apologized for his statement a few days later in a non-apology. And that too
because of media and social media pressure.
Furious
at the senior official's indifferent remark, several people, including
prominent celebrities like actress Mira Sethi demanded his resignation
(Representative Image). | Photo Credit:
iStock Images
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One of the
two alleged rapists was caught while the other one is still at large.
Convictions in rape and sexual assault cases are less than three percent
according to a report by the Karachi-based War Against Rape. Reporting rapes
and sexual assault is also low because of the attitude of our investigative
officers, the culture at police stations and later in the courts. The statement
of the CCPO Lahore is not out of the ordinary because that is the sort of mind-set
that women fight every day in this part of the region. When Pervez Musharraf
was president, he said in an interview that “if you want to go abroad and get a
visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped”. This
is the mindset that is prevalent across society. From ‘she was not dressed
right’ to ‘she was alone’ to ‘why was she out at night’ to many other such
accusations, a rape survivor has to face much more.
Rape is a
crime that scars a survivor’s entire life. In 2005, when I did a report on rape
survivors, a survey said that 82 per cent of them revealed that the experience
had permanently changed them. The real numbers may be even higher. We cannot
even comprehend what they face. Families in this part of the world usually tend
to hide the incident. A police official told me how, in a small town, they
initially heard of a gang rape but when the family filed a report, it was of a
robbery. They later found out that three women of the same family were raped in
front of their male family members, but the family did not want to make this
crime public due to the social stigma attached to it. This is the unfortunate
truth: survivors and their families are not willing to come forward because
they do not want to relive the trauma and they also do not want to be
ostracized from society as a result of reporting a violent crime. It just shows
how helpless a rape survivor is when the law and society are not on her side.
A poll
conducted by Amnesty International back in 2005 revealed that more than a third
of Britons blame flirting on the part of women for them being raped. A quarter
of the population thinks that a woman wearing revealing clothing is completely
or partially responsible when she is sexually assaulted. About one in 12
believe that a promiscuous woman is wholly responsible for being raped. This
was in a western country, a sexually liberal country, 15 years ago. Imagine
then the kind of views in a patriarchal society like ours where domestic abuse
victims are usually told to go home and settle this ‘family matter’ instead of
bringing their assaulters to the police.
Our media
have behaved responsibly in the recent gang rape incident. In the past, we have
seen the survivor’s name, picture or her address flashed across newspapers and
some television screens. This time, it was ensured that nobody finds out about
her identity because the survivor had requested complete privacy. Hopefully,
this practice will continue in the future for other survivors as well. Our
society’s apathy and victim-blaming culture also needs to end.
Crimes
against women — be it domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual assaults,
rapes, ‘honour’ killings — are treated as if they are a norm. It is not just
sad but reflective of how we see women. In the words of Shirley Chisholm, the
first woman African-American Congress member, “The emotional, sexual, and
psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a
girl’.” This is the stark reality of women in our parts of the world.
In South
Asia, crimes against women are quite high but the treatment meted out to women
is appalling. From casual sexism to downright harassment to not letting women
exercise their right to choose, we live in a world where many women are now
coming forth asking for their rights in the face of extreme patriarchy. When a
police chief of a large city tells women not to step out of their houses after
a certain hour, it gives a message that women are on their own if a crime is
committed against them at odd hours. What if the survivor’s fuel tank was full
but her car had another technical fault, what about rapes that take place
inside houses in broad daylight, what about the so-called honour killings that
take place at the hands of family members because the women chose to marry of
their own will? Who will the CCPO blame then? It is a shame that we have people
with these mind-sets policing our cities.
Let’s hope
that someday soon this culture of rape apologist’s ends and women are treated
as equal citizens.
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Mehmal Sarfraz is a journalist based in Lahore.
Original Headline: Violent trap
Source: The Telegraph India
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/lahore-sialkot-motorway-gang-rape/d/122994
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