How bad is Karo-Kari?
Karo Kari is the form of honour killings. Last year 286 women were murdered in the name of honour by the male family members. On 11th June 2000, four women and one man were killed in the Dera Jamali village in Sindh. Last year on the same dates a 13 year old girl, Sara, was subjected to this honour killing in Goth Khosa. Two young boys Imtiaz and Arshad were also killed in the same case. The boys had never met the young girl in their lives. But the brother of Sara declared it an honour killing to get less punishment in law. This law also gives some leniency to the killers in such cases. He actually wanted to grab the land of these boys and used this accusation to kill the boys along with his sister.
In the village of Moratha there was a case of Karo-Kari. The motive of the killing was that the murderer wanted to marry a married woman. He killed the husband of that woman and his own innocent sister and he was released from jail after a few months.
Many of the cases of Karo Kari are related to love marriage. Recently a woman with her little child of five months, husband and four other members of her in-laws, was killed because she had committed the crime of love marriage. Most of the women in Pakistan are not allowed to marry a person of their choice.
Table 1 Statistics related to the number killed in Kari-Karo instances.
It must be noted that in the case of Pakistan the incidence of actual reporting is very low and no estimate can be made of the total number of deaths.
The position of women in society:
The women folk of our nation face several challenges. There is wide spread gender bias in every sphere of life. May it be the school, college, university, job market, armed forces etc. In every sphere the problems and causes are deep rooted. Below we shall try to investigate some of the challenges that women face, and how victims of Karo-Kari face little or no recourse by law.
Women, victims of economic degradation:
At the present time Capitalism has created a society of want and greed in which human beings have to live a life of cut-throat competition in order to survive. In countries like Pakistan it has also failed to bridge the gap between the rural and urban areas. It has failed to develop different regions evenly and penetrate modernity into rural sections of the population.
Basic needs such as education, health water supply and transport, etc., are inadequate. On the other hand there is the penetration of all forms of the latest technology, like satellite television, which has distorted the patterns of social and cultural development of these areas. In villages we can see clear forms of combined and uneven development. T.V and satellite is available but tools and methods of farming are thousands of years old. These deformed patterns of development have further aggravated the lives of women in the rural areas.
The domestic labour of women, looking after the children, cleaning the house, cooking, washing and the many other forms of labour in which women are involved is a full day's work. But this system does not reward this human labour. Hence the cultural, social, moral and ethical roots of society are devised in such a manner that this system gets the labour of women in running society for free and is taken for granted. Hence this condition whereby women do not get back the product of their labour develops a psychology of alienation.
Women are therefore expected to work as hard as possible without getting there monetary or financial rewards. This economic system perpetuates the need for patriarchal support for women in the rural or even urban centres. By controlling the wallet the men affectively make the women subservient to their wishes.
Women as a device of honour:
In the rural areas, women are like slaves subject to drudgery. They are there just to obey their fathers, brothers and husbands. They do not have the right to decide about themselves because women are considered as foolish creatures according to the dominant social and cultural norms. Likewise marriage is also a sort of trade between different families both in the rural and urban areas. They are highly vulnerable to violation of their rights to life.
A woman's right to liberty is restricted in the name of modesty, protection and prevention of immoral activity. In rural areas 90% of women work in the fields. They work for the whole day with their male family members, but they still have to face their wrath. Male family members keep a strict eye on the female family members in the name of "honour". But one must understand the meaning of honour because in our society honour does not have the meaning of its true sense. Here it really means possession of women as a form of property. Not only are the restrictions of women's liberty maintained in the name of this honour but they also can be put to death if they lose their "honour".
In such a sad state of affairs how does the male dominated society perpetuate these old traditions?
The Law:
The colonial influence:
The British colonial administration in Sindh and Baluchistan imported Karo-Kari into its criminal code. Whereby, although murder was a capital crime, a double-murder if proven to be a Karo-Kari situation must lead to lesser penalties for the perpetrators. The application of the rule of Karo-Kari was more stringent and rigorous.
The colonial administration, in its quest for building culturally appropriate, hence politically palatable jurisprudence, accepted Karo-Kari as a mitigating factor or as an excuse and not as one of the traditional defenses. Fundamentally, the Actus Reus of murder shown to be Karo-Kari connotes demonstrable lack of Mens Rea, as such proof beyond reasonable doubt of pre-meditation, would cause any attempt at this excuse to fail. The defense had the absolute onus for establishing Karo-Kari. The methodology was very stringent.
The current juridical processes in Pakistan are ill-suited and ill-equipped to dispose of such matters. Unfortunately these courts are presided over by corrupt judges who lack independence and have difficulty comprehending their role, or by mullahs who are predisposed to teach women a lesson in morality, or by military officers who lack basic understanding of the principles of natural justice or that of procedural fairness.
The Hadood Laws:
The Islamic Penal Law "Hadood Ordinance" repealed the provisions of the Pakistan Penal Code related to rape cases, in 1979. The Islamic Law of evidence applicable to cases of rape requires the evidence of four adult male Muslims, in order for the penalty of Hadood to be imposed upon the accused. Being a half witness by law the raped woman can't even testify against the crime committed against her. According to these laws, testimony of the victim requires strong corroboration for conviction by the court. On the other hand, where sexual intercourse is established but the absence of consent cannot be proved, the presumption that such intercourse occurred with the woman's consent can place her at the risk of prosecution.
In both cases, adultery or rape, a woman is kept in jail pending the ruling of the court. 52% of women languishing in the jails of Pakistan are waiting for their fate in these cases. In the case of a woman marrying without the consent of her family, the marriage can be declared invalid and the couple would then be accused of the offence of zina (adultery).
If the women victimized by the offenders contact the law (the police) and the other investigating agencies, the women of the oppressed classes are subject to police brutality and crimes like rape are often carried out while in custody. The incidence of sexual assault on women in police custody increased after the implementation of these Islamic laws.
Qasas Law:
Another law, "Qasas", is also used to victimize women, because under this law if a person kills somebody and the family of the victim compromises with the killer then they are paid an agreed amount of money, land and of course women by the assassin's family.
Marriage to the Holy Quran:
Marriage to the Holy Quran is also common in Sindh. Under this law a woman has to live without a husband throughout her life. But this law is only applied among the class of landlords. They use this only to keep and grab the land of their sisters and daughters.
The Police, Recourse to law:
In Karo-Kari cases, when husbands appear in the police station with their blood smeared weapons declaring that they have killed their wives, police often fail to take action against them, reflecting their unwillingness to enforce the law over custom. An activist in Karachi told Amnesty International:
"Police are not trained to look at things dispassionately. When a woman is believed to have done something 'illicit' or if she claims her rights, there is something wrong with her, she deserves to be punished in the eyes of the police.”
While police by and large concur with traditionally held views of women, financial corruption also seems to contribute to their inaction before such crimes.
Conclusion:
In conclusion several facts are evident. For one it shows that Karo-Kari is a product of cultural attitudes pertaining to the Hindu background of Sindi and Baluchi’s. Islam on the other hand while giving rights to the males failed to break the shackles of a patriarchal male dominated society. On the other hand it’s also evident that India under British rule did not witness any social or cultural changes. In-fact colonial era laws were successful in perpetuating the status quo. After partition the situation did not improve. Indeed the Hadood Laws of the Zia era may be considered a step backwards. Laws that required females to produce witnesses of alleged rapes have lead to thousands of women lying in prison with an uncertain judicial future. The patriarchal nature of the economic order further perpetuates the system. While women remain economically subjugated and reliant on there male partners for support, little hope remains for the eventual emancipation of women.
Historical facts also support this hypothesis. It wasn’t until World War One and the entrance of women into the industrial arena that women received the right to vote and economic freedom. In Pakistan’s case, karo-kari remains a social curse as it not only leads to violence against women; however it also leads to an alienation of women from the social sphere. Women, which make up 50% of the population, are thus excluded from the economic order that is essential for the betterment of our nation. Thus practices such as Karo-Kari essentially alienate women, leave them with little faith in the institutions of the judiciary and exclude them from there important role in the economic well being of our nation.
Thus Karo-Kari and its effects go beyond killings. It’s destroying our social fabric. Through means such as reversal of biased laws, education, land reform women may be emancipated from there sorry state and offered hope for their futures.
