AHMEDI BEGUM

The perils of being a woman in Muslim Pakistan

In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan more than 75% of all women in jail are there under the charges of zina or adultery. And al most all are physically and sexually abused by the police. Most of the women are charged under the hudud ordinances. Hudud are the set of punishments set forth by prophet Muhammad.

Here are a few examples of hudud sentences.

Adultery---stoning to death.
Apostasy or leaving islam---death
Theft-cutting off of right hand.
Simple robbery on the highway-loss of hands and feet.
Robbery and murder-death.
Drinking alcohol-eighty lashes with the whip.

The charge of zina is usually applied by men who wish to get rid of their wives without having to divorce her even though divorce is very easy for the man in Islam. The wife gets immediately arrested and put away for many years before her trial comes up. It is estimated that there are 10, 000 women in prison in Pakistan for alleged zina.

According to Women's Action Forum, a women's rights organization, one woman is raped every three hours in Pakistan, many of them juveniles. If the juvenile gets pregnant death eventually and before trial is inevitable.

Ahmedi Begum is such a woman. She is now 56. In 1994 she decided to let two rooms in her house to two veiled young women who had come to Lahore for education and perhaps a job. The day she was showing them the rooms the police burst into the house and arrested the two women and Ahmedi Begum's nephew who just happened to be standing by.

Ahmedi Begum went to the police station to enquire about the women and her nephew.

To Ahmedi's astonishment the police arrested her too. Shortly after they brought the two women to her cell and started to rape them. Ahmedi covered her eyes but the police held up her arms and forced her to watch.

The police then started to fondle her and began raping her after stripping her stark naked. Several police officers took their turns and then she was taken outside and beaten. One of the policemen forced a truncheon covered with chilli paste into her rectum, rupturing it. Ahmedi screamed in horror and agony and fainted.

When she woke up the police charged her with zina. It took her three years before the trial took place. A human rights activists took up her case and had her released. To this day the policemen involved have not been charged. Because the law requires at least four male witnesses and none could be found.

To add insult to injury her son-in-law divorced her daughter claiming Ahmedi had shamed his family and him.

It is important to note that Jinnah who forced the partition of India wanted a secular Pakistan and a relatively just system of laws based on secularism was at least partially in place. In the 1970s and 80s when the army staged another coup and took the reins of power, the dictator, General Zia began to introduce Islamic law including the hudud ordinances.

Thus the legal evidence given by a woman was considered half that of a man. Under secular law her would-be tenants, the two veiled women would have been able to give evidence against the officers.

But under Islamic law that would not have been good enough.

ADAPTED FROM JAN GOODWIN'S "PRICE OF HONOR'

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