“A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped.” Thus spake General Pervez Musharraf in response to a question about the mishandled rape cases of Dr Shazia Khalid and Mukhtar Mai. This insensitive statement has provoked condemnation all round – including from the Canadian prime minister compelling General Musharraf to explain that he was misquoted. But has he had a change of heart about how to deal with such cases? Has his view of women’s NGOs and human rights groups changed? No.
After the Mukhtar Mai fiasco, General Musharraf had bristled with indignation and self-righteousness. “I stopped her from going”, he thumped his chest. When that drew howls of protest, Mr Khurshid Kasuri was quick at damage control. “He was misquoted”, said Mr Kasuri rather lamely, “there can be no doubt about General Musharraf’s sincerity in promoting women’s causes”. Unfortunately, General Musharraf has since reiterated and owned his remark several times. But that’s not all.
General Musharraf is angry that Dr Shazia Khalid is “bad-mouthing Pakistan abroad”. He says he will help her if she returns to Pakistan. But this is a ridiculous offer. From the outset, the government has done exactly the opposite. It spirited Dr Shazia from Sui even before the local police could start the investigation, secreted her from the press in Karachi so that she couldn’t tell her story, quietly put her on a plane for London and told her to forget about her ordeal. The rapist is still at large and investigation has been shelved. Recently, Nelofer Bakhtiar, the government’s testy handler, had the cheek to “invite” Dr Shazia to a PR conference on women. Affronted, Dr Shazia has spilled the beans about how a military official first pressed and then arranged for her to leave the country.
General Musharraf’s ire is actually focused on women’s and human rights NGOs whose job and responsibility it is to highlight crimes against women and bring pressure on government to redress grievances. “Why aren’t India or France or Britain or the USA lambasted internationally for crimes against women, especially rape which is all too frequent in these countries”, he wants to know. “Because our NGOs are unpatriotic and insincere”, is his own readymade answer. But this is preposterous. General Musharraf, like most of his uniformed colleagues, thinks nothing of monopolizing patriotism and the national interest. But he should pause to consider why women’s and human rights activists are constrained to shriek in protest in Pakistan and not so much in other countries. It is not that Pakistan’s record of rapes is worse than that of other countries – which is what angers General Musharraf but that Pakistan’s embedded religious, legal and political culture is decidedly more hostile to women’s emancipation and rights than that in many other countries. And when avowedly ‘moderate’ or relatively ‘liberal’ regimes such as General Musharraf’s fail to act judiciously or expeditiously, the end result is likely to be acute frustration and outrage. Rapists are caught and punished, and women’s rights and honour are vigorously defended by the law, in most modern and moderate countries. But this is not the case in Musharraf’s Pakistan. “Semi-feudal societal customs” may be an important explanatory factor, as General Musharraf points out, but surely apathetic state institutions, governmental indifference and lingering bad laws are more relevant. We expect more action from General Musharraf because that is what he has promised us. However, when he starts railing against the NGOs for doing their job he descends to the same level as that of the illiterate PML-N MNA Saad Rafique who was notorious for hounding them to the wall. General Musharraf’s statement shows him up as part of the prejudiced herd and not as its enlightened leader.
Indeed, General Musharraf’s ire at a young woman who questioned him at a meeting in New York last Saturday shows him up as brash and arrogant. According to a news report, “pandemonium broke out… when an irate President Pervez Musharraf declared that those who opposed his policies were the enemies of Pakistan.” The report says the event degenerated into a bout between General Musharraf and part of the invited audience. “I am a fighter, I will fight you. I do not give up and if you can shout, I can shout louder,” said General Musharraf. “Lady, you are used to people who tell lies. I am not one of them.” When a woman raised her voice to ask a question, the president said: “Are you a Benazir supporter? We have introduced new leaders who don’t tell lies unlike your leaders who did… I am disappointed with people like you. You work with people who looted and plundered the nation. You are against the national interest, you have your own agenda. I know that there are people with vested interests and financial interests who are against Pakistan.”
Is this a playground mud-slinging match or what? Where is the president’s dignity? Increasingly he seems on edge tense, resentful, anxious, brittle. The more he berates the defenseless the more he demeans himself. We need gravitas, Mr President, gravitas.