Violations of women’s rights continue

My last column in Gulf News, on June 20, was titled ‘Violations of women’s rights must stop’. And yet I find myself writing on the same issue today, simply because not a week goes by without a new horrific story about the same problem in different parts of the world — and not necessarily in Muslim communities. The ready availability of cellphones with video capability makes it easy for such stories to go viral.

I refer to the videotaped execution in Afghanistan of a woman accused of adultery. Part of what I heard in the TV report is that she had sex with a male lover, as well as with two “commanders”. The story did not specify whether the contact with the commanders was in fact rape, but it would be reasonable to assume that. And yet the commanders were not punished or prosecuted or even mentioned beyond that. She, on the other hand, we were told, was judged by some local group to have committed the crime of adultery and was sentenced to death. There was no mention of any defence lawyer or number of witnesses or right of appeal. What we did see was the graphic execution with several bullets in the back of a fully dressed woman crouching on the ground, surrounded by hundreds of men at different elevations of the hilly area of execution of yet another Muslim woman who brought shame to her community, and therefore had to die!

This week, we saw on a rather poor video clip 20 men molesting, touching and pawing one defenceless young woman who had just left a bar in the capital of India. We were told that they undressed her in view of the whole street and touched her all over. It was only after a large group of Indian women took to the streets in a loud protest march that the chief minister ordered an inquiry, the results of which are to be published two weeks later. The latest news is that six of the 20 men have so far been arrested.

This week too I happen to have read the must-read book ‘Tears of the Desert’ by Halima Bashir, a young Sudanese Muslim woman from the Zaghawa tribe in Darfur, Sudan, who managed to qualify as a physician, against all odds. She describes horrendous graphic scenes of wholesale rape by the Janjaweed militia of all the girls in one school in her area — girls as young as eight. She also describes in heart-wrenching detail her own torture and gang rape by members of the Sudanese “security forces”.

In the earlier chapters of her book, Halima gives the most personal and horrendous description of FGM (female genital mutilation or female circumcision) that I have ever read. Even as a doctor with some surgical experience, I found it difficult to read. It should be read by all parents contemplating putting their daughters through such barbaric torture, perpetrated in the name of religion or tradition or chastity or whatever other excuse. Unfortunately, such parents tend to be the segment of a society that does not read. But there are other ways of reaching such parents.

I was very happy to see that this issue was under the microscope of the United Kingdom All Party Parliamentary Group on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. I was in London two weeks ago and found myself giving verbal evidence of child marriage and FGM in Yemen, partly because of my ethnic and medical backgrounds, to a 12-member subcommittee, mostly made up of women, headed by Baroness Tonge, herself a gynaecologist. It was a unique experience. Getting to the committee room was quite a challenge. Inside, the houses of parliament are extensive and rather ancient with many long creaky stairs, no elevators that I could see and rather crowded waiting areas for witnesses. However, the warm and polite reception by the committee made up for all that.

What was most important for me was that a large multiparty committee was carefully looking into such horrendous abuses committed against millions of women, thousands of kilometres away from the mother of all parliaments. That spells hope for women in Yemen, Sudan, India and elsewhere.

Dr Qais Ghanem is a retired neurologist, radio show host, poet and novelist. His two novels are Final Flight from Sana’a and Two Boys from Aden College. He lives in Canada.