After being gang raped by her village elders, Mukhtar fought back...

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After being gang raped by her village elders, Mukhtar fought back...

By Isambard Wilkinson, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 1:12am GMT 29/01/2007

 

 

Isambard Wilkinson in Multan, Pakistan, hears the extraordinary story of an

illiterate peasant woman who took on her village as well as the state

 

Mukhtar Mai's story is as horrific as it is simple, and it is quickly told. On

June 22, 2002, the council of her tiny village, on the southern fringes of the

Punjab in Pakistan, ordered that she be gang raped as a punishment for an

offence supposedly committed by her 12-year-old brother.

 

Mukhtar Mai still lives in her home village where her life remains in danger.

 

At gunpoint she was taken into a stable. Her clothes were ripped off and she was

violated by four village elders. The ordeal lasted about half an hour and, when

it was over, she was dragged out, semi-naked, in front of all the village men.

Her father covered her with a shawl and carried her home.

 

Mukhtar, who is also known as Mukhtaran Bibi, should then have killed herself.

That was the custom. But such was her sense of outrage and injustice that she

refused to commit suicide; and that act of defiance started a sequence of events

that turned her into an international cause célèbre, who was first praised and

then condemned by Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf.

 

Mukhtar, an illiterate peasant, is an unlikely heroine. The crime committed

against her is not uncommon in an area benighted by poverty, acts of brutality

against women and the rule of thuggish overlords.

 

But she has refused to be cowed by the pressure put upon her, by local officials

right up to the president, to end her campaign against the men who raped her.

She wants them to be hanged. " I will never forgive them, " she said yesterday.

" They must be punished according to the law. "

 

This week, she publishes the autobiography she dictated, In the Name of Honour,

which will again stir up the controversy over all that has happened to her. It

took some persuading to get her to tell her story, and for the slight, shy

35-year-old with a lazy eye and a rare but wheezy laugh, recounting the events

of that night, five years ago, is still painful.

 

The first time Mukhtar realised that something was wrong was when her father

asked her to go with him to the village mosque. Her 12-year-old brother, Shakur,

had been accused of committing a " crime " - she didn't know what - against a

20-year-old woman belonging to the local dominant caste, the Mastoi.

 

Mukhtar and her family are from the lowly Gujar caste and are expected to be

subservient to the Mastoi. She thought that she was being asked, as a

respectable woman, to speak to the village elders on behalf of her brother.

 

As Mukhtar, accompanied by her father, Ghulam Farid Jat, an uncle and a family

friend, approached the mosque, she could see a large gathering of men outside.

This was the panchayat, the village council.

 

What she didn't know was that it had been taken over by the Mastoi men, who had

resolved that to appease the honour of their caste, she must be raped in revenge

for what they claimed was the rape of one of their women by Shakur.

 

" I never thought that anything could happen, " says Mukhtar. " I went there to

apologise and come back home. "

 

She spread a shawl at their feet as a sign of subservience. Five men armed with

rifles and a pistol threatened the Gujars.

 

The Mastoi leader, Abdul Khaliq, grabbed her arm, others pulled her hair and

clothes and she was dragged into an empty stable.

 

On the beaten earth of the stable floor, Mukhtar was raped by four men: Abdul

Khaliq, Gulam Farid, Allah Dita and Mohammed Faiz.

 

Mukhtar finds describing her fight-back difficult, too.

 

" It is not an incident that gives you any relief, " she said. " I still have

pain. "

 

After the rape, she ignored death threats and pressed charges. A local imam

denounced the attack at Friday prayers and the crime became national news, after

the local newspaper reported his sermon.

 

In September 2002, the case was tried in a special anti-terrorism court. " I

begged and pleaded with the rapists, but they were like animals, " Mukhtar told

the court.

 

" One of them put a gun on my head while the others tore up my clothes. "

 

The four men were sentenced to death, along with two members of the panchayat.

It transpired that the allegation against Shakur, was made up in an attempt to

hide the fact that it was her brother who had been raped by men from the Mastoi

caste.

 

Three men were later sentenced to three years in prison for that crime.

 

Initially, the Pakistani government lauded Mukhtar as a heroine; President

Musharraf even handed her a £4,500 gift. But when the case received publicity

abroad and Mukhtar was asked to visit America to talk about her ordeal, the

government put her name on Pakistan's " exit control list " , which blocked her

from leaving the country.

 

They were afraid that the case would give the wrong impression of Pakistan.

 

According to Amna Buttar, one of Mukhtar's close circle, a friend of Gen

Musharraf threatened her, saying that Pakistan's intelligence services can " do

anything.

 

We can just pay a little money to some black guys in New York and get people

killed there " .

 

Asked about the ban, President Musharraf said she was being exploited by

" Westernised fringe elements " who wanted her to " bad-mouth " Pakistan. He later

said that the rape had become a money-making concern. "

 

" He is a great sardar [chief] and I am a peasant, " said Mukhtar. " But when they

talk of me shaming the country, he should be careful, as he is also the son of a

woman. "

 

In 2005, thousands of her supporters took to the streets to protest, after the

death sentences against the rapists were overturned. However, that decision was

quickly revoked by the Supreme Court, although it has still to issue a final

judgment.

 

" Fate is in the hands of Allah, " says Mukhtar simply. Her own global fame is at

odds with her modesty, and her ambition and affection remains focused on her

village, despite all that has happened there.

 

" I have a routine of dealing with people continually. I don't have a life of my

own, as groups always come to the village. "

 

She has used her compensation money, along with international donations, to

start two schools in her village and to run a charity to promote women's

development.

 

Mukhtar, who had been married at 16, divorced her husband after three years of

unsatisfactory marriage. Now, since she attained fame (and a reasonable amount

of money), she has received a dozen marriage proposals.

 

" I haven't found a good person yet, " she laughed. " But I trust men. I am not

against them. "

 

She may have achieved fame and more money than she could have dreamed of a few

years ago, but her life is still in danger.

 

Just a few hundred yards from her family's home is the large compound of the

Mastoi. They have neither forgotten nor forgiven, and have threatened to kill

her and her brother.

 

Chris Cork, an English development agency consultant who helps Mukhtar with her

village projects, is convinced that the Mastoi will get their revenge. " They

have said they will kill her one day. And they will. She has great courage and

dignity. She never asked for fame. "

 

" What if you are killed? " I ask Mukhtar.

 

" I am just the first drop of water in the village, " she says quietly. " I believe

it will rain after me. " In the Name of Honour, by Mukhtar Mai, will be published

this week by Virago

 

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Dear All,

 

i don't tend to think so much in terms of countries anymore. Through the

internet the people of this world are becoming a Global Family. This is really a

beautiful thing, like a lotus that is rising out of the mud. There are a lot of

yucky things we are witnessing in this mud too, like who is doing what to whom,

but the thing is that we are now realising that we are One Human Family, and

what hurts you hurts me and vice versa, whether we realise this fact... or not.

 

Those who are 'in the mud' are still in spiritual darkness and need to come to

the light of their Spirit. i cannot blame anyone, because it is the whole human

societies that are sick today and they are sick all over the place. No one is

immune from this global sickness. However, there is hope and that is the Hope

that the Adi Shakti has brought on Earth. The Hope of Awakening Spiritually and

Becoming the Lotuses that we really are.

 

violet