Pakistani Women's Rights Heroine Mukhtar Mai on NBC Dateline

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Dateline joins New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof as he reports on one Pakistani woman’s struggle for justice and her determination to change the lives of women around her.

Mukhtar Mai was gang raped in 2002, at the order of a tribal council in the eastern provice of Punjab. It’s my understanding that the rape was ordered to restore honor and punish Muktar’s family for her brother’s alleged indiscretion with a woman from a higher-caste family. via Glamour Magazine: A One-Woman War on Injustice (Note: Mukhtar Mai’s family says he’s completely innocent.)

via Glamour MagazineThe defiant Mukhtar Mai was featured as one of Glamour Magazine’s 2005 Women of the Year, for her efforts not only in surviving her gang rape but deciding not to commit suicide, which was expected of her, to restore the honor of her own family. This is a common expectation of women who are raped in many countries of the world.

Not only did Muhktar decide to press her case legally — with the support of her mother — but she won in court.

The Dateline feature follows Muhktar’s story including her use of the compensation money to fund a school for girls in Pakistan. In an interesting twist, Huff Po reported last March that Mukhtar Mai now the second wife of Nasir Abbas Gabol, a police officer who was assigned to protect her as her case gained notoriety.

This story also is filled with local customs and intrigue, including the fact that Nasir Gabol threatened to kill himself when Muhktar rejected his offer of marriage. Her husband is totally enraptured by Muhktar’s “extreme courage”.

Pakistani women via Flickr’s BrajesshwarA One-Woman War on Injustice: Glamour Magazine

Update on 2009-09-14 19:50 by Anne

Slate Magazine has published today a review of Half the Sky, written by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his Chinese-American wife, Sheryl WuDunn.

The focus of the review — and the book Half the Sky is the concept of “gendercide”.

More girls are killed in this “gendercide” each decade than in all the genocides of the 20^th century. This year, another 2 million girls will “disappear.”

The Slate review does refer to Mukhtar Mai’s case. In an effort to open up the details of this case, I quote Slate:

In July 2002, her younger brother was kidnapped and gang raped by a higher-status clan. In order to cover up the crime, the gang accused him of having raped one of “their” girls. A tribal council heard the case and found him guilty—and ruled that, as punishment, his sister Mukhtar should be gang raped.

If other versions of the case appear, I will add them to this article. In my experience, having travelled and worked so extensively in this part of the world, these words also are humiliating to the family, but I don’t have an editorial board to advise me here.

Until I do, I’ll respond to the criticism levied at my ommission of facts yesterday, printing the story as it appears in reputable media sources. Anne