I’ve been reading a book written by Xinran on the women of China and couldn’t stop thinking of how many other hidden voices are there in the world today. There are women being abused each and everyday without anyone noticing. Even though one may notice of the continuous abuse, but can one step up to report the incident? Rapes and abusive stories had been circulated through out the media everyday and nothing is done to prevent these from happening as, first of all, the government could not control the entire population in a country and secondly, no one actually dares, not even me, to step up and bravely report the incidences of abuse in the neighbourhood.

I was just flipping through the Time magazine one night and an article caught my attention all of a sudden. The article entitled ‘Fighting Feudalism’ caught my very attention. I read it through and a feeling of disgust just lingered in my heart. My heart cried out to the women in rural areas of Pakistan where, until today, believe in tribal punishment or tribal justice. I just couldn’t understand why, until today, men still uses their ‘reproductive system’ (scientifically speaking) on women in order to show their supremacy. In the days of war, rape was not seen as an activity to satisfy one’s sexual pleasures or lust, but it was a tool to show once victory over another’s land and even a way to strip off an honour of a women as well as declaring victory over the community’s enemy. Women were seen as a weak-link, as men were seen to be superior right up till today.

A little inside on how the tribal justice is done in the rural areas of Pakistan

One may say it’s disgusting or inhumane to one so fragile and vulnerable, but the fact is, these things are still going on around the world and again, they remained hidden. For instance, tragedy in a household where mother-in-laws burnt their daughter-in-laws to death because found looking or speaking to other men besides the husband in Bangladesh. Repetitive stories on rape in a household or by a close one are always circulated in newspapers. What is the world coming at today?

Back to my point, women were dehumanized in Pakistan just because an offensive act was done to another person of another household. Taking a narrative from the article, Mudassan and Mumtaz were raped because one of their family members “dishonoured” another villager. The penalty for the dishonoring caused to another villager will be that women of the offender’s family will be raped by the men of the household who were offended. I don’t see justice in this, rather, I see inhumane and uncivilized beast roaming central Pakistan. Only one woman, Mai, who was brave enough to step up to protest against the inhumane activity, others chose to remain quite because they do not want to offend the village council. Like men, women have pride and honour; and like men, women are supposed to be guarded in a country.