Student stabbed 23 times fights for justice

Alleged attacker walks free

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 14, (AFP): A Pakistani law student has emerged as a women’s rights crusader after she was stabbed 23 times in a busy street only to see her alleged attacker walk free, igniting outrage across the deeply patriarchal country.

Khadija Siddiqui, 23, survived the frenzied attack in broad daylight outside her sister’s school on a busy thoroughfare in the teeming eastern city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, in May 2016.

Her sister was also injured as she tried to defend her, and the brazen attack only ended when her driver managed to pull the assailant off and rush Siddiqui to hospital, where she was admitted to intensive care with her neck slashed, her arms wounded, and a deep injury to her back.

Siddiqui named her attacker as Shah Hussain, a classmate whom she had rejected romantically. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison in July 2017.

But Hussain, the son of a prominent Lahori lawyer, appealed the decision — and in a shock judgement released on June 4, the Lahore High Court acquitted him on all charges.

The decision was greeted with an uproar in Pakistan, where hundreds of women are murdered and attacked by men each year, with many struggling to get justice in a sluggish court system that advocates say is often slanted against them.

“I was shocked,” Siddiqui, who spent three weeks in hospital after the attack and whose back still pains her, told AFP. “But unfortunately it was true.”

Siddiqui’s long struggle to put her attacker behind bars had already drawn attention from women’s rights campaigners, but when Hussain walked free it unleashed a wave of anger.

“I am heart broken, speechless, shattered after hearing what our judiciary system did to you @khadeeeej751 —

mostly foreigners including riders from the UK, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. (AFP)

Insurgents burned down clinic:

The governor of eastern Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province says a clinic that was providing medical facilities for more than 2,000 people has been burned down by insurgents.

Hafiz Abdul Qaum says the attack happened early Thursday in Kamdesh district and seven staff members were taken hostage, with five later freed. But do not give up, keep fighting, and we shall overcome this together,” tweeted actress Urwa Hocane.

Hamza Ali Abbasi, another TV personality and activist, commented: “We must all unite & be Khadija’s voice & leave no stone unturned to get her justice against this barbarian! #WeAreWithKhadija”.

The hashtag was trending in Pakistan within hours of the acquittal.

The reaction intensified when the court’s judgement was released, with critics accusing it of “victim-blaming” after it poked holes in Siddiqui’s credibility.

The judgement questioned why she did not name Hussain as her attacker immediately, despite testimony saying she had fallen unconscious; and noted that at one point prior to the assault she had written a letter proposing marriage to him. The outcry was so great that Pakistan’s Supreme Court has now taken up the case and will hold hearings later in the summer, it announced Wednesday.

Hashmi, Hussain’s father, has told AFP that his child is innocent. “My son is a brilliant student,” he said. “How can he be a criminal?”

Siddiqui’s case highlights how Pakistan’s judicial system fails women, says Hina Jilani, a leading lawyer and human rights activist.

The young law student is lucky in that she received high-profile support and it came to the Supreme Court’s attention, Jilani says — but that is rare.

“There is a prejudice against women,” she argues.

Pakistan is deeply conservative, and violence against women remained “pervasive and intractable” in 2017, according a yearly report by the country’s Human Rights Commission.

It documented thousands of reported violent incidents including rapes, assaults, sexual harassment, acid attacks, murders, and even four examples of “stove burning” — understood to be

Qaum says two doctors are still being held by the insurgents. He said all the facility’s equipment was burned.

Zakiullah Storay, head of the health deportment in the province, said the facility was important, with 20 beds for people living in the rural area. (AP)

Afghan poll preps marred:

Infighting, a lack of expertise and unfilled vacancies within Afghanistan’s election body raise doubts about whether polls planned this year can be held on time, according to when a woman is taken into a kitchen, covered in kerosene and set alight; then the perpetrators claim she was burned by the stove.

The real figures, the commission said, are likely to be much higher.

Many cases of violence against women are not reported to authorities. In rural areas such cases often bypass the formal justice system and are dealt with by village “jirgas” or councils, often in a manner that is punitive for women.

But even for those cases which do enter the court system, the conviction rate is “below one percent”, says Rabeea Hadi, an activist with the Aurat Foundation, a women’s rights watchdog.

In cases of domestic violence and sexual abuse, it is “almost zero”, adds Anbreen Ajaib, the executive director of another women’s rights group, Bedari.

Siddiqui says women, including herself, are often pressured to drop their cases, and can face blackmail and harassment.

But she is determined to see hers through, and says the attention it has received has prompted many women to contact her to say they, too, are encouraged to stand up for themselves.

A Pakistani group linked to the deadly 2008 Mumbai terror attacks was denied permission Wednesday to register as a political party just weeks before national polls, officials said.

The Milli Muslim League (MML) was launched last August to contest the July 25 elections, which will be only the second democratic transfer of power in Pakistan’s history.

But the group was blacklisted by the US in April as Washington ramped up pressure on Islamabad to crack down on extremist groups operating in the country.

On Wednesday the Election Commission officially rejected their application to register as a political party.

Afghan and international agency officials, with one likening planning meetings to “a fish market”.

October’s vote, already much-delayed, is seen as a crucial test for democracy in a country at war for four decades, and comes amid increasing attacks by Taleban and Islamic State insurgents who have threatened to target the electoral process.

But in the last six months, the chairman and CEO of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), have been sacked, and an acting CEO quit. The head of human resources was also sacked this month, having failed to hire hundreds of provincial electoral officers.

“Four months before the polls, they are still at the planning stage,” a high-ranking international aid worker told Reuters. “You cannot play a football match with half of your team missing. There are times when we have witnessed shouting matches in the IEC office. It’s like a fish market.”

Seven of the 10 top positions at the secretariat in Kabul, which oversees commission offices across 34 provinces, have yet to be filled.

The parliamentary and district council elections have already been put back from 2014 due to a lack of political consensus on electoral reforms and a shortage of funds.

The polls are seen as a dry run for next year’s presidential election and a key test of the credibility of President Ashraf Ghani’s government, which has been under pressure from its international backers to ensure the vote takes place since the last, fraud-tainted presidential election in 2014.

The United Nations, overseeing the election process, and the United States, leading international military efforts to force the Taleban to the negotiating table, are hoping for elections that at least appear to be mostly free and fair. (RTRS)