Pakistan Army uses Rape as an Inhuman Tool of Suppression


Rape Victims by Pakistani Army from 1971 Bangladesh to Khaisoor (North Waziristan)


On 27th January, 2019, a video of a Pakistani woman from North Waziristan went viral on Twitter. In the video, the woman claimed that Pakistani soldiers took away her husband, and came back many times to her home to harass her along-with her daughter.
The outrage came to light when Hayat Wazir, the courageous younger son of the woebegone mother, had his statement video recorded by a local, Yahya Khan, revealing that Pak Army goons had abducted his father.
Thereafter, Hayat’s mother plucked up the courage to speak and said that she had been sexually by security officials at her home in North Waziristan.

She said “Soldiers told me to prepare the bed & put a pillow on it, if your husband can not come to spend the night then we will”.

Tragically, instead of taking action and providing justice to the victim, the local who recorded the video was badly beaten by a government backed group of hoodlums.
“Officials in civil dress & their informers kept torturing me for 2 hours but I managed to escape. My only crime was to record video of Hayat.”
- Yahya Khan
And concurrently bribes were offered to Hayat Khan & his family to change their statement by military officials and Deputy Commissioner of North Waziristan.

Gulalai Ismail, a Pashtun activist who also runs an award-winning NGO called ‘Aware Girls’ said, the sexual abuse and harassment of women by the Pakistani military in her region (North Waziristan) has been rampant for many years, but it is the first time that the women are coming forward themselves, and it is mainly because of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (a social movement for Pashtun human rights, based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan) which has given the women the courage to speak up.

Pakistan’s shame and oppression of women

About 400000 women were raped by the Pakistani military during the Liberation War Bangladesh 1971

Rape is a violent act used to exert power and control and history provides evidence of this.

“Pakistani soldiers fighting to suppress Bangladesh's independence, which was declared in 1971, terrorized the Bengali people with night raids during which women were raped in their villages or carted off to soldiers' barracks to suffer nightmares.”

In an army dominated, patriarchal country like Pakistan, rape and violence against women is common and women are often forced to remain silent about the abuses faced at the hands of the Pakistani soldiers. Pakistani soldiers aiming to crush voices of freedom in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the tribal belt are using torture and rape as tools to silence women.

From Bangladesh to Balochistan
Pakistani history books do not include a hint of the number of women who were raped in their villages, forcefully abducted and kept in barracks in Dhaka cantonment and used as sex slaves during 1971, Bangladesh’s Liberation War - as is happening now in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

History is repeating itself in Balochistan, as similar incidents emerge from the oppressed area where the army targets Baloch women with excesses because they are becoming politically aware.
"In the last two days, the home of a Baloch activist with women and children has been under siege by Pakistani paramilitary forces. Prior to this, they kidnapped more than 40 women with children from the Bolan area of Balochistan," - Ms Farzana Majeed Baluch, Human Rights Activist, Balochistan.
https://www.financialexpress.com/world-news/pakistan-armys-reign-of-terror-continues-on-pashtun-community-women-taken-as-sex-slaves/507715/
Earlier, Umar Khattak, a Pashtun activist, spoke against the Pakistani Army and accused them of keeping hundreds of Pashtun girls in Lahore as sex slaves. (ANI)


Breaking the Silence
‘Let bygones be bygones.’
This behaviour of leaving the perpetrators unpunished for the 1971 crimes against humanity has perhaps set a destructive precedent in Pakistan.
From Bangladesh to Balochistan, the flawed justice system is the reason why such violence thrived.
“Repatriation did not end such responsibility, it merely transferred primary prosecutorial responsibility to Pakistan where it remains today.”
-[Jordan P Paust and Albert P Blaustein (1978)]

A group of well known women's rights political activists visited the Waziristani woman last month, to assess the situation on-ground. They have unearthed similar claims from various women who have been subjected to sexual abuse by the the Pakistani Army. But due to the fear and ‘honour codes’ they prefer to stay silent.
Hayat’s mothers raising her voice for her missing husband and son and breaking her silence about the abuse by Pakistani Army will further encourage women across Pakistan to find their voice and combat the adversities.

A fight to change the system
Despite the presence of a number of prominent newspapers and channels, the North Waziristan incident failed to make any headline.
In the wake of the event, a well-known Pakistani Journalist for 30 years, Hamid Mir, is seen interviewing the Director General of ISPR – General Asif Ghafoor where he becomes conformist & calls the Khaisor Incident an “ongoing Propaganda”.
By calling a woman's ordeal of harassment a ‘propaganda’, the Pakistani Army’s media wing, the ISPR has enforced biased reporting, through sheer intimidation.
Added to this ugly reality is the fact that the state and its sponsored media wing is ridiculing brave women who are breaking their silence, and in order to escape responsibility of the violent acts, they are citing a jirga (a tribal council) ruling to say that such women are lying.
People are seething under the atrocities committed by the state. General Asif Ghafoor in his statement regarding the Khaisor incident has tried to provoke the pashtuns for ‘honour codes’ by saying that,
"Speaking against rape is not in their culture."

Just as thousands of women raped in the Bangladesh Liberation war, were awarded a title ‘Birongonas’ (a Bengali term which means ‘war heroine’) by the newly formed government of Bangladesh  in order to stop discrimination against such women (‘honour codes’); so also let’s take notice and take radical steps to honour Pak women victims and do something about punishing the felons who commit such heinous crimes. Impunity for Pakistan’s wartime rape must end now. The 1971 war crimes as well as every other rape that happened in the conflict areas must translate into a commitment to punish the perpetrators.

It is when mouthpieces of ISPR turn a blind eye to such incidents, brave women activists and strong victims start fighting for their own rights to show the world the real face of the Pakistani Army and challenge them that change will come.
They,
Raise their voice against War crimes,
Raise their voice against personal and collective humiliation by the Uniformed terror group.
Raise their voice for prestige,
Raise their voice for the lost dignity.
Raise their voice for women who don’t even know what their rights are.


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