Kabirwala(Video Owner Hometown),Pakistan
After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over.
Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her.
The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. Thats the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.
Instead, Assiya summoned the unimaginable courage to go public and fight back. She is seeking to prosecute both her kidnappers and the police, despite threats against her and her younger sisters. This is a kid who left me awed and biting my lip; this isnt a tale of victimization but of valor, empowerment and uncommon heroism.
I decided to prosecute because I dont want the same thing to happen to anybody else, she said firmly.
Assiyas case offers a window into the quotidian corruption and injustice endured by impoverished Pakistanis — leading some to turn to militant Islam.
When I treat a rape victim, I always advise her not to go to the police, said Dr. Shershah Syed, the president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan. Because if she does, the police might just rape her again.
Yet Assiya is also a sign that change is coming. She says she was inspired by Mukhtar Mai, a young woman from this remote village of Meerwala who was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council. Mukhtar prosecuted her attackers and used the compensation money to start a school.
Mukhtar is my hero. Many Times readers who followed her story in past columns of mine have sent her donations through a fund at Mercy Corps, at www.mercycorps.org, and Mukhtar has used the money to open schools, a legal aid program, an ambulance service, a womens shelter, a telephone hotline — and to help Assiya fight her legal case.
The United States has stood aloof from the ubiquitous injustices in Pakistan, and thats one reason for cynicism about America here. Im hoping the Obama administration will make clear that Americans stand shoulder to shoulder with heroines like Mukhtar and Assiya, and with an emerging civil society struggling for law and social justice.
Assiyas saga began a year ago when a woman who was a family friend sold her to two criminals who had family ties to prominent politicians. Assiya said the two men spent the next year beating and raping her.
The men were implicated in a gold robbery, so they negotiated a deal with the police in the town of Kabirwala, near Khanewal: They handed over Assiya, along with a $625 bribe, in exchange for the police pinning the robbery on the girl.
By Assiyas account, which I found completely credible, four police officers, including a police chief, took turns beating and raping her — sometimes while she was tied up — over the next two weeks. A female constable obligingly stepped out whenever the men wanted access to Assiya.
Assiyas family members heard that she was in the police station, and a court granted their petition for her release and sent a bailiff to get her out. The police hid Assiya, she said, and briefly locked up her 10-year-old brother to bully the family into backing off.
The bailiff accepted bribes from both the family and the police, but in the end he freed the girl. Assiya, driven by fury that overcame her shame, told her full story to the magistrate, who ordered a medical exam and an investigation. The medical report confirms that Assiyas hymen had been broken and that she had abrasions all over her body.
The morning I met Assiya, she said she had just received the latest in a series of threats from the police: Unless she withdraws her charges, they will arrest, rape or kill her — and her two beloved younger sisters.
The family is in hiding. It has lost its livelihood and accumulated $2,500 in debts. Assiyas two sisters and three brothers have had to drop out of school, and they will find it harder to marry because Assiya is considered dishonored. Most of her relatives tell Assiya that she must give in. But she tosses her head and insists that she will prosecute her attackers to spare other girls what she endured.
(For readers who want to help, more information is available on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)
Assiyas mother, Iqbal Mai, told me that in her despair, she at first had prayed that God should never give daughters to poor families. But then I changed my mind, she added, with a hint of pride challenging her fears. God should give poor people daughters like Assiya who will fight.
Amen.
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Pakistan is a country whose officials, government and police definitely cannot be trusted and is most certainly corrupt.
macjimjava 10 months ago
shes a prostitute just trying to get men locked up ,or make money.
naazamk 1 year ago
its her mothers fault for selling her.
naazamk 1 year ago
hello madam, this nice attempt to help and create sense to avoid this kind of brutal animal things against innocents.
thanks
M. dauod
National Assembly of Pakistan
dodi788 1 year ago
These Bloody Rapist must be murdered or beheaded in the whole public so that another Penis Nerve Gets Errected ! You bastard Pakistani !! You beed to fuck your own mother ..Never ever trust Police & Army !! These are Dogs Wild Dogs !! They arent for Safety they are for Fucking !!! FUCK YOU pAKISTAN !!!
fyunuskhan 1 year ago
i am a Muslim born in the uk with roots from Jhelum pakistan. this is common and a disgrace. There is no law and order and under sharia the police and the first rapists would be executed. This is just one of many cases in this corrupt iliterate country.
yahudidushman 1 year ago
I glad she took courage and brought this to public. She will get justice. What a courageous woman. Its happens because most of the girls keep quite and now they want her to stay quite as well but not anymore. Pakistan women are now much more courageous and brave.
FabricsNThings 2 years ago
good work
7911974 2 years ago