Qandeel Baloch & the question of human rights in Pakistan
FollowQandeel Baloch actually survived just three years. She was first noticed when she appeared for an audition for Pakistan Pop Idol in 2013 on Geo Entertainment channel. She was rejected leading to her outburst on TV (she clearly understood the power of the telly). Her breakdown was shown several times in loop during a show and she provided just what the producers wanted.
Baloch was murdered on July 16, 2016. In Pakistan most people knew it was only a matter of time before she would be attacked except one didn’t know her brother would be the murderer.
She never spoke about her personal life. Only once she mentioned her parents during an interview saying they had given her too much freedom and she knew she was misusing it but now it is too late.
Pakistan was kind of dismissive about Baloch till her death when it emerged she came from an under-privileged background with little or no education (stories are now emerging that she put herself through college) and yet battling the severest odds to become Pakistan’s first social media star with over a million followers on Facebook.
She started as a ‘bus hostess’, married off as a teen with financial struggle and patriarchal oppression. But she wouldn’t take it without a fight and walked out of her abusive marriage with a child laying to rest Fouzia Azeem her original name and giving birth to Qandeel Baloch, a new brand of subversive social media persona with her brazen posts and self-exposure.
She wasn’t slick and had no publicist to guide her. She produced her own videos that often amounted to titillation. But her posts would also resist patriarchy and social oppression. She would say, “I will fight for it. I will not give up. I will reach my goal. & absolutely nothing will stop me.”
Baloch in a sense defied the established social norms and she should be remembered for that. In a country where women do not enjoy the most basic rights she redefined sexuality.
Since her death there has been an outpouring of op-eds, essays, blogs, features, tweets and Facebook posts in support of her. Contrasting this is condemnation of her and how she deserved to be killed.
Women’s rights in Pakistan
Pakistan’s record of protection of women’s rights is abysmally poor. Violence against women is a daily count in the country. Many landmark legislations have been enacted since 2001 but non-implementation of laws is a major impediment in achieving gender equality. In the last 15 years, Pakistan has enacted more pro-women bills than any time in its history.
This year itself the Punjab government had tabled a bill for protection of women against violence. But thirty religious groups threatened to pull down the government if the bill was not revoked.
Their logic was giving women protective rights means promotion of obscenity. Only recently the government-funded Council of Islamic Ideology released an official statement permitting men to “lightly beat” their wives
Landmark legislations:
- Pakistan citizenship act, 1951 amended in 2001
- Amendments in Family Courts Act for Khula in 2002
- The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2004 (on honour crimes)
- Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, 2006
- Criminal Laws (Amendment) Act, 2010 (on Sexual Harassment)
- Protection of Women Against Harassment at the Workplace Act, 2010
- Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Laws Amendment) Act, 2011
- Acid control and acid crimes prevention Act, 2010
- Women in Distress and Detention Fund (Amendment) Act, 2011
(Source: Aurat Foundation)
Qandeel’s case, however, needs to be seen in the context of ‘honour killing’. In its June 14, 2016 report titled Pakistan: Prosecute Rampant ‘Honor’ Killings, Human Rights Watch stated: “Pakistan’s government should urgently investigate and prosecute those responsible for the recent jump in reported “honor” killings in the country. The government needs to send a message of zero tolerance.
In Pakistan, murders to protect family or community “honour” have received widespread attention in recent weeks. On June 8, 2016, Zeenat Rafiq, 18, was burned to death in Lahore by her mother for “bringing shame to the family” by marrying a man of her choice.
On May 31, family members tortured and burned to death a 19-year-old school teacher in Murree, Punjab province for refusing an arranged marriage proposal.
On May 5, the body of Amber, 16, was found inside a vehicle that had been set on fire in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, after a jirga, or traditional assembly of elders, ordered her death for helping her friend marry of her own choice.”
In a column for Dawn, published on June 16, secretary general of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan I A Rehman wrote: “Apart from confirming the continued brutalisation of society [he is referring to the incidents mentioned in the Human Rights Watch report] these incidents reveal a growing intolerance for women’s rights not only among men but also among women themselves. While civil society organisations, women activists and some politicians have felt outraged, the public outcry has not been as loud as it is sometimes in other cases of violence against women, such as gang-rape under panchayat orders…
“In the debate over the surge in violence against women, the remedy is generally sought in developing new legal instruments to punish the culprits … no member of a religious party is reported to have considered the burning of women worth talking about, and that betrays how far Pakistan’s religio-political elements have gone in their psychopathic hostility towards women.”
The real issue is the fact that it has not been possible to make women-friendly laws, nor to fully implement such laws, because of the orthodoxy’s opposition.
Only the other day the prime minister’s special assistant for law and human rights revealed how two bills, one on ‘honour killing’ and the other on rape, have been stuck in parliament due to the opposition of a single religio-political party, [Jamiat Ulema-e-Fazl] which is, incidentally, as indispensable an ally of the present government as it was of the previous one.
Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a senior journalist and author. His most recent book is Blood on my Hands: Confessions of Staged Encounters (Harper Collins 2015). The views expressed here are his own.
