Burn­ing of lady teacher in Mur­ree

Pakistan Observer - - EDITORIALS & COMMENTS -

JUST few weeks af­ter the chill­ing mur­der of a six­teen year old girl who was stran­gled and set on fire in Ab­bot­tabad, the torch­ing of a school teacher by a mob in Mur­ree on Tues­day once again re­minds us how vul­ner­a­ble the women are to vi­o­lence that any­body can pick and kill them at free will - some­thing that is unimag­in­able and un­think­able in the 21st cen­tury.

Our great re­li­gion Is­lam al­lows woman to select a per­son of her choice for mar­riage and no­body has the right to force her to marry any­one. Whilst ex­er­cis­ing the same right, the Mur­ree teacher was burned to death for re­fus­ing the mat­ri­mo­nial pro­posal of the son of the school prin­ci­pal. De­spite govern­ment’s often re­peated claims of tak­ing steps to­wards em­pow­er­ment and eman­ci­pa­tion of women folk, the sit­u­a­tion is that the crimes against them are in­creas­ing ev­ery year. They are tor­tured and killed in the name of so­cial norms and tra­di­tions for ‘hon­our’ and the cul­prits mostly avoid pun­ish­ment due to their power, so­cial stand­ing and in­flu­ence. All these in­ci­dents are not only em­bar­rass­ing and put our heads in shame but are also taint­ing the im­age of the coun­try which stands on 82nd po­si­tion out of 93 coun­tries in the Gen­der Em­pow­er­ment Mea­sure and ranks on 115 out of 140 coun­tries in the Gen­der In­equal­ity Index. Though most of vi­o­lence cases go un­re­ported but ac­cord­ing to a re­port of NGO, about 860 in­ci­dents of hon­our killings, 481 of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and 344 cases of rape or gang rape were recorded just last year. These fig­ures speak vol­ume of our so­ci­ety, which be­ing the Is­lamic one should give el­e­vated sta­tus, has be­come in­tol­er­ant to­wards women. We be­lieve that so long as state and so­ci­ety do not re­al­ize the need for a so­cial revo­lu­tion, in­clud­ing de­mo­li­tion of feu­dal tyranny, it will be im­pos­si­ble to end vi­o­lence against women, or to em­power them, or even to break the vi­cious cy­cle of poverty and ex­ploita­tion, as a re­sult of which women suf­fer more. As re­gards the Mur­ree in­ci­dent, we will urge the govern­ment to take strict no­tice of the in­ci­dent and those in­volved in the ghastly in­ci­dent should be hanged pub­licly so that no­body in fu­ture could take courage to re­sort to such acts.

ACHINESE na­tional and his driver were in­jured on May 30, 2016 when a road­side bomb ex­ploded at a Green Belt, Gul­shan-e-Hadeed area in Karachi. The re­mote con­trolled de­vice ex­ploded when a car car­ry­ing the Chi­nese cit­i­zen crossed by. Pam­phlets with threats writ­ten on them were re­cov­ered from the site of the at­tack. Hun­dreds of Chi­nese na­tion­als are work­ing on de­vel­op­ment projects in­clud­ing the China-Pak­istan Eco­nomic Cor­ri­dor (CPEC) in Sindh and Balochis­tan. Re­spon­si­bil­ity for the at­tack was claimed by the banned out­fit Sindhu Desh Lib­er­a­tion Army, which had planted IED bombs on rail­way tracks on Au­gust 14, Pak­istan’s In­de­pen­dence Day.

The Chi­nese cit­i­zen was slightly wounded in the bomb at­tack and has now re­turned to his res­i­dence safely af­ter re­ceiv­ing treat­ment in the hospi­tal. At­tach­ing high im­por­tance to this in­ci­dent, the Chi­nese Em­bassy in Pak­istan and Con­sulate-Gen­eral in Karachi in­stantly lodged rep­re­sen­ta­tions with the Pak­istani side, ask­ing them to get to the bot­tom of this in­ci­dent and take con­crete mea­sures to pro­tect Chi­nese in­sti­tu­tions and take con­crete mea­sures to pro­tect Chi­nese in­sti­tu­tions and per­son­nel. They also ad­vised lo­cal Chi­nese to heighten their se­cu­rity alert. Pak­istani author­i­ties are work­ing on the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In the re­cent past, In­dia has been highly crit­i­cal of Chi­nese in­vest­ments in Pak­istan, the de­vel­op­ment of the Gawadar Port and the mega project

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