March 5, 2005
THE NOBLER SEX
When Rapists Walk Free (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, March 5th, 2005)
One of the gutsiest people on earth is Mukhtaran Bibi. And after this week, she'll need that courage just to survive.Mukhtaran, a tall, slim young woman who never attended school as a child, lives in a poor and remote village in the Punjab area of Pakistan. As part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped. She begged and cried, but four of her neighbors immediately stripped her and carried out the sentence. Then her tormenters made her walk home naked while her father tried to shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers.
Mukhtaran was meant to be so shamed that she would commit suicide. But in a society where women are supposed to be soft and helpless, she proved indescribably tough, and she found the courage to live. She demanded the prosecution of her attackers, and six were sent to death row.
She received $8,300 in compensation and used it to start two schools in the village, one for boys and one for girls, because she feels that education is the best way to change attitudes like those that led to the attack on her. Illiterate herself, she then enrolled in her own elementary school.
I visited Mukhtaran in her village in September and wrote a column about her. Readers responded with an avalanche of mail, including 1,300 donations for Mukhtaran totaling $133,000.
The money arrived just in time, for Mukhtaran's schools had run out of funds. She had sold her family's cow to keep them open because she believes so passionately in the redemptive power of education.
Now that cash from readers has put the schools on a sound financial footing again. And Mercy Corps, a first-rate American aid group already active in Pakistan, has agreed to assist Mukhtaran in spending the money wisely. The next step will be to start an ambulance service for the area so sick or injured villagers can get to a hospital.
Down the road, Mukhtaran says, she will try to start her own aid group to battle honor killings. And even though she lives in a remote village without electricity, she has galvanized her supporters to launch a Web site: www.mukhtarmai.com. (Although her legal name is Mukhtaran Bibi, she is known in the Pakistani press by a variant, Mukhtar Mai).
Until two days ago, she was thriving. Then - disaster.
A Pakistani court overturned the death sentences of all six men convicted in the attack on her and ordered five of them freed. They are her neighbors and will be living alongside her. Mukhtaran was in the courthouse and collapsed in tears, fearful of the risk this brings to her family.
Is there a man walking this earth that doesn’t owe this woman?
Posted by Peter Burnet at March 5, 2005 5:39 PMI don't owe her a g-damn thing as I did nothing to her.
But I will keep her experience in mind the next time I hear some yahoo try to tell me that Muslims are ready to live in the civilized world. There isn't a place where Buddhism or Hinduism is the dominant faith, let alone where Judaism and Christianity reign where this result would have been countenanced.
Posted by: Bart at March 5, 2005 5:51 PMWhat was it General Mattis said about such men?
Posted by: Amos at March 5, 2005 5:58 PMBart:
From the man who likes to refer to women as bimbos.
Posted by: Peter B at March 5, 2005 6:52 PMWe owe her something just for being a man? It makes you a criminal because some lowlifes did something as despicable as what they did to her and you happen to be of the same gender? I agree with almost everything Brothers Judd says but that comment was pretty outrageous.
Posted by: Mike at March 5, 2005 7:05 PMIf a woman is stupid, or acts stupid and presupposes that she should be treated any differently from a man, if she engages in a tradiitonally male activity, and then she fails to perform in a manner a man would be expected to perform, then she is a bimbo.
Peter, I call 'em like I see 'em. When I see a Nazi, I call him a Nazi. When I see a Commie, I call him a Commie. When I see a racist, I call him a racist. My mother worked for 35 years and never asked for one g-dman special favor. This is a tough world we live in. No quarter is asked and no quarter is given. If a woman wants the benefits of that world, she should be willing to put up with the costs of that world. Otherwise, she should shut up, take her shoes off and get back in the kitchen.
Posted by: Bart at March 5, 2005 7:08 PMSounds like oj's gotten tired of sleeping on the couch.
Posted by: joe shropshire at March 5, 2005 7:12 PMMike:
Anymore outrageous than a Jewish person that says Christians should see the Holocaust as a formative event? And please cut out the red herring about "criminal". Is who you are and what you stand for a function of the criminal law?
Posted by: Peter B at March 5, 2005 7:28 PMBart:
"My mother worked for 35 years and never asked for one g-dman special favor."
"If a woman wants the benefits of that world, she should be willing to put up with the costs of that world."
Intersting combo. And only two sentences apart.
Posted by: Peter B at March 5, 2005 7:32 PMDo I owe her? Personally, no. I didn't do anything. Am I ashamed of being a human male, when such barbarism is carried out because (I'm assuming this part due to lack of local knowledge) of the attackers being men? Yes. No, HELL YES! I am a man. I try to be a gentleman. I try to treat everyone I meet with courtesy and respect, and this sort of story gets the blood a boilin'.
This is totally unacceptable, and reminds me of the story of the British Colonial officer in England who enforced the ban on suttee and was told it was local custom. His reply was that in England they hang men who burn women to death and they may build their pyre and he'll build a gallows, and let each act according to custom.
Perhaps the Pakistanis need some of that again.
I'm going to go off and seethe for a bit.
Read: British Colonial officer in INDIA...
Proofreading is not my strong suit, especially when my teeth are grinding.
Posted by: Mikey at March 5, 2005 7:53 PMKill ten thousand tribesmen, and their customs will change overnight. Either that, or start performing FULL male circumcision.
Posted by: ratbert at March 5, 2005 9:33 PMThis lack of respect for other cultures is just what the world has come to expect of you arrogant, western-centric conservatives.
Posted by: David Cohen at March 6, 2005 12:18 AMThe point, Peter, is that my mother never asked for the kind of special treatment and advantage that is regularly demanded by the Ally McBeal wanna-bes who infest the modern Western workplace. I'm sorry if that is too abstract a point for you to understand.
Observing women in the workplace has given me a new appreciation for the traditional Eastern European view on the role of the sexes.
Posted by: Bart at March 6, 2005 7:15 AMGee, Bart, it only took five posts for you to move from a gut-wrenching atrocity in rural Pakistan to an ode to your mother. Isn't there a word for that talent?
Posted by: Peter B at March 6, 2005 9:07 AM