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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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Pakistan investigates 'honor killings' of 5 women
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-02 10:07 About 60 activists demonstrated outside the federal Parliament in Islamabad on Monday, shouting "Burying women alive is no honor!" "We condemn this barbaric act," said Mohammed Ibrahim, a senator for the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party. "This is against Islam, against humanity and against civilized culture." Sanaullah Baloch, a nationalist leader from Baluchistan, denied that such brutal justice was embedded in local culture. He blamed the government for failing to provide better health and education services to women and girls in the southwestern province, which remains impoverished despite rich mineral resources. "Socially and economically marginalized society is always frustrated," Baloch told Dawn News television Monday. Human rights groups say the women were abducted at gunpoint by six men in the remote village of Baba Kot, forced into a vehicle and taken to a field, where they were beaten and shot. Rights activists say they were then covered with rocks and mud while they were still breathing. The deaths took so long to investigate, rights groups allege, because members of a powerful political family in the province were involved. Though many honor killings are believed to go unreported, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 174 women were victims of such crimes nationwide in 2005, 270 in 2006 and 280 in 2007. The figure in the first five months of 2008 alone stands at 107, it said. Rights groups complain that few of the culprits are convicted. |
