World | Pakistan
Domestic violence is rarely talked about in Pakistan
International agencies estimate that up to 70 or 80 per cent of women in Pakistan could be facing abuse within their homes.
- By Kamila Hyat, Correspondent
- Published: 22:59 September 12, 2008
Lahore: The fact that domestic violence is high across Pakistan is well known to many.
International agencies, including the New York-based Human Rights Watch have estimated up to 70 or 80 per cent of women in the country could be facing abuse within their homes, whether verbal, physical, sexual or psychological.
Despite this, the issue is rarely discussed at public forums. While attempts have been made at both the provincial and national level to move legislation on the issue, this has yet to become law.
Despite the setting up of special centres for women handled by female personnel and crisis centres for women facing violence, the problem continues.
"Many women, indeed most women I know have been beaten or abused in other ways by their husbands. It is something we only rarely talk about, but which we widely accept," said Siddiqa Bibi, 60, a grandmother from the Mozang area in Lahore.
Changes
But this reality may be changing. Two recent cases in the city have exposed both the impact domestic abuse has on families and the new willingness of women to combat it - in whichever way they can.
Some two weeks ago, a young woman hurled her five-year-old daughter, Zoya, into the River Ravi and then tried to hurl into the river herself. Two rickshaw drivers who had spotted her action saved her and the child.
Initially it was reported that poverty was the key reason for this, but a statement made later by the husband of the woman, who was overseas at the time, stated his wife had been driven to despair by domestic abuse inflicted by his mother and brother.
He has opted in view of what happened at the Ravi to "move into our own home."
Even this reflects a change in attitudes and a new readiness to recognise women need not face abuse.
The other incident involves a court case brought by a woman attempting to recover her infant son from the Edhi Foundation, a welfare organisation that takes in abandoned children.
The child had been taken away from his mother by the father during a domestic row.
The mother later discovered he had left it at the local Edhi centre, which subsequently shifted the baby to its nursery in Karachi.
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