Hopework-l Mailing List: FW: sentenced to rape

[Evan -- (tsaimaster]

All-

I received this from a friend of mine at school.  We came across an OpEd
piece in the NY Times not too long ago and it empowered her to want to help
the person for which Nicholas Kristof writes (see the article below).

Terri, my law school friend, wants to rally support for Ms. Mukhtaran's
school as described below - especially since it's facing financial distress.
  If you'd like to help, please let me know either via e-mail
(evan.tsai [at] state.mn.us) or by e-mailing Terri at tportwright [at] wmitchell.edu

Both Terri and I want to thank you for your time and your compassion.

Evan

----Original Message-----
From: Port Wright, Terri [mailto:tportwright [at] wmitchell.edu]
Subject: sentenced to rape
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Hi Section 4: Hopefully many of you will hear me
talk about this in ConLaw on Wednesday night (if you are in the class w/
Ijima and if she gives me 5 minutes). But, I wanted to give you a heads
up and let you know what is going on.
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I read the article below with tons of horror and
decided to raise money to support Ms. Mukhtaran's school. I will bring
envelopes for you to donate whatever you can find in your heart to
contribute. I sincerely believe that she probably has more courage than
I will ever have in my entire life and that our support is the right
thing to do. Whether to can afford a buck or $10, please consider
donating something!
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I have a good friend that works for the Agency for International Development
and she will get the money directly to Pakistan and to Ms. Mukhtaran, so no
worries there. I have also talked
>with Dan Thompson, and I am not violating any school policy bysoliciting
>you for a contribution.

So....if you thought your life stinks, if you were ever nervous about doing
anything, think about the guts this woman had to have to get up after being
gang raped, walk naked through the
>street, and then say NO, I WILL NOT COMMIT SUICIDE, and then go to the
>government and say, I WAS THE VICTIM, HELP ME....wow. humbles ya, doesn't
>it?? Thanks for listening and for thinking about making a contribution!!!
>
Terri

Sentenced to Be Raped

September 29, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
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MEERWALA, Pakistan - I'm still trying to help out President Bush by tracking
down Osama bin Laden. After poking through remote parts of Pakistan, asking
for a tall Arab with a beard, I can't say I've earned that $25 million
reward.

But I did come across someone even more extraordinary than Osama.

Usually we journalists write about rogues, but Mukhtaran Bibi could not be
more altruistic or brave, as
the men who gang-raped her discovered. I firmly believe that the central
moral challenge of this century, equivalent to the struggles against slavery
in the 19th century or against totalitarianism in the 20th, will be to
address sex inequality in the third world - and it's the stories of women
like Ms. Mukhtaran that convince me this is so.

The plight of women in developing countries isn't addressed much in the
West, and it certainly isn't a hot topic in the presidential campaign. But
it's a life-and-death matter in villages like Meerwala, a 12-hour drive
southeast from Islamabad.

In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused
one of Ms. Mukhtaran's
brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having
an affair with a high-status woman. The village's tribal council determined
that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men
to rape one of the boy's sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to
be gang-raped.

As members of the high-status tribe danced in joy, four men stripped her
naked and took turns raping her. Then they forced her to walk home naked in
front of 300 villagers.

In Pakistan's conservative Muslim society, Ms.Mukhtaran's duty was now
clear: she was supposed to commit suicide. "Just like other women, I
initially thought of killing myself," said Ms. Mukhtaran, now 30. Her older
brother,        Hezoor Bux, explained: "A girl who has been raped has no honorable
place in the village. Nobody respects the girl, or her parents. There's a
stigma, and the only way out is
suicide."

A girl in the next village was gang-raped a week after Ms. Mukhtaran, and
she took the traditional route: she swallowed a bottle of pesticide and
dropped dead.

But instead of killing herself, Ms. Mukhtaran testified against her
attackers and propounded the
shocking idea that the shame lies in raping, rather than in being raped. The
rapists are now on death row, and President Pervez Musharraf presented Ms.
Mukhtaran with the equivalent of
$8,300 and ordered round-the-clock police protection for her.

Ms. Mukhtaran, who had never gone to school herself, used the money to build
one school in the village for girls and another for boys - because, she
said, education is the best way to achieve social change. The girls' school
is named        for her, and she is now studying in its fourth-grade class.

"Why should I have spent the money on myself?" she asked,adding, "This way
the money is helping all the girls, all the children."

I wish the story ended there. But the Pakistani government has neglected its
pledge to pay the schools' operating expenses. "The government made lots of
promises, but it hasn't done much," Ms. Mukhtaran said bluntly.

She has had to buy food for the police who protect her, as well as pay some
school expenses. So, she said, "I've run out of money." Unless the schools
can raise new funds, they may have to close.

Meanwhile, villagers say that relatives of the rapists are waiting for the
police to leave and then will
put Ms. Mukhtaran in her place by slaughtering her and her entire family. I
walked to the area where the high-status tribesmen live. They denied
planning to kill Ms.Mukhtaran, but were unapologetic about her rape.

"Mukhtaran is totally disgraced," Taj Bibi, a matriarch in a high-status
family, said with satisfaction.
"She has no respect in society."

So although I did not find Osama, I did encounter a much more ubiquitous
form of evil and terror: a
culture, stretching across about half the globe, that chews up women and
spits them out.

We in the West could help chip away at that oppression, with health and
literacy programs and by simply speaking out against it, just as we once
stood up against slavery and totalitarianism. But instead of standing beside
fighters like Ms. Mukhtaran, we're still sitting on the fence.
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>http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29kris.html?ex=1097466310&ei=1
>&en=488f9bb7063d6f13
><http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/29/opinion/29kris.html?ex=1097466310&ei=
>1&en=488f9bb7063d6f13>
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