Getting away with murder – “Honour killing” in Pakistan
“So far, I’ve lost eight women from my shelter,” Hina Jilani says. “One went out for a job in town, she left our shelter, got on a bus – and was gunned down by her brother. Her name was Shagofta, she was in her late twenties. She had already married the man she loved but the parents had disapproved. Her brother got straight off the bus and went to the police station and gave himself up. But his father – Shagofta’s father – ‘forgave’ him. So he was let off. And nothing happened.”
Ms Jilani is a tough, brave lawyer with a harsh way of describing the “honour killing” – the murder – of young women. She has to be tough, given the death threats she’s received from Pakistan’s Islamists. She speaks with contempt for the families who murder their women – with even more contempt for the police and the judges who allow the killers to go free. Pakistan has the grotesque reputation of being one of the leading “honour-killing” countries in the world.
“Some of the women in our Dastak shelter in Lahore left us after assurances from their families that they would not be harmed,” Ms Jilani says. “We always tell the women not to accept these assurances. In the Lahore High Court, I was sitting there when the judge was insisting that a women from our shelter should go back to her parents. The more the judge insisted, the more the woman resisted. He made her sit in his chambers and then in the court. And then, as she left the High Court gate, they shot her down. The judge said nothing.”
