In 2002 a Pakistani woman, Mukhtaran Bibi, was very publicly gang-raped as a result of a semi-judicial decision by a tribal council in her village. Her case happened to be reported, first in the local press and then worldwide. Readers were horrified. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case of appalling abuse of women in Pakistan. What were exceptional were the publicity and the victim’s eventual reaction to what had happened to her.

After being “dishonoured”, Mukhtar was expected to commit suicide. Instead, this illiterate, lower-caste peasant fought back. Everything stood in her way. Police wrote statements for her that she could not read and demanded that she put her thumbprint on them. She and her family were threatened and told what they must say. Mukhtar insisted on telling the truth. Despite the obstruction of officialdom, from the lowest to the highest levels, and the threat of further violence from the original criminals and their family, she doggedly fought in the courts against the rapists. She was lucky in one respect in that her case was reported in the press and taken up by the media worldwide.

As her case progressed and was publicised so she herself learned more about the violence that many of her countrywomen had suffered. A Pakistani women’s activist told her, “Half the women of our country are the victims of violence. They’re either forced into marriage, or raped, or used as objects of exchange among men. It doesn’t matter what the women think, because they’re not supposed to think at all! They’re not allowed to learn to read and write, to find out how the world around them works. That’s why illiterate women cannot defend themselves: they know nothing about their rights, and words are put into their mouths to sabotage their revolt.”

Perhaps because of the huge publicity or perhaps because, despite everything, Pakistan still has honourable judges, Mukhtar won her case and some of her attackers were sentenced. The publicity brought in funds with which she was able to found a girls’ school in her village and even begin to learn to read herself. She had come to understand how important education was in the struggle for the human rights of women. She was now called Mukhtar Mai, the latter word meaning “respected elder sister”.

But then, she suffered a reverse. Nearly three years later, the verdict of the first court was reversed on appeal and all but one of her attackers were released and came back to her village to threaten her and her family. After huge protests by Mukhtar and her supporters, the men were rearrested as terrorists.

Mukhtar has become a renowned campaigner against the unfair treatment of girls and women, but her fame abroad has not won her plaudits from many in her own country. She has been accused of bringing Pakistan into disrepute and was for a while prohibited from leaving the country. The real shame of Pakistan lies in its toleration of the widespread oppression of women.

This is not a conventional book in terms of storytelling. It is a somewhat disjointed compilation by the writer Marie-Thérèse Cuny from a series of conversations (via an interpreter) with Mukhtar Mai. But it gives a vivid picture of what it is like to be a woman in a backward tribal society governed by tradition and religion, where women are regarded more as things than as people. The story of Mukhtar Mai should serve as an inspiration to all who are concerned about human rights.

---

Mukhtar Mai (with Marie-Thérèse Cuny, English translation Linda Coverdale) In the Name of Honour, 2007 Virago, London. Original French version: Déshonorée 2006 Oh! Editions, Paris.