THE NEW YORK TIMES: Another Pakistani woman is killed for ‘honour,’ but she’s not forgotten

The woman took her final steps on the open desert terrain in southern Pakistan and stopped, turning her back to her executioner as he raised his gun.

“You can shoot me,” said Bano Bibi, 35, her beige shawl fluttering in the wind. “But nothing more than that.”

The man shot Bibi three times, killing her on the spot over accusations that the mother of five was having an affair. Then he turned to the man accused of being her lover, Ehsanullah Samalani, a 50-year-old father of four, and shot him dead as well.

The double execution has shocked many Pakistanis, sparked protests and drawn widespread condemnation from politicians.

It caused outrage not just because it was another so-called honour killing in Pakistan — where, on average, more than one woman is slain every day for supposedly dishonouring her family — but because the authorities took action only after a video of the shootings went viral, more than six weeks later.

“Many communities and families insist that their misplaced sense of ‘honour’ is located in a woman’s body and actions,” said Sherry Rehman, a senator who introduced a resolution calling for the prosecution of those involved in the killings of Bibi and Samalani.

Rehman said perpetrators were emboldened by the low rate of prosecutions for such killings. “That is also why control over a woman’s actions and rights find so many colluders across the board in keeping heinous customs like this alive,” she said in a written response to questions.

Politicians and law enforcement officials in this Muslim nation of more than 240 million people have long vowed to do more to protect women. They have repeatedly promised to take action against perpetrators of killings like these, which are carried out in the name of centuries-old traditions.

But Bibi’s death, her defiant last words and the impunity enjoyed for weeks by those who ordered her death have yet again cast doubt on Pakistani officials’ ability, or will, to tackle one of the country’s most persistent and egregious forms of violence.

In the video, male onlookers can be seen watching in silence, neither moving nor trying to intervene, some of them filming the execution with their smartphones.

Late last month, the police opened an investigation into the killings, which took place in early June. More than 15 people were arrested within days. Among them was Bibi’s mother, who, in a video recorded before her arrest, had said that the killing “had to be done” and “was necessary to cleanse our family’s honour.”

“It’s mostly victim blaming, where the killer will say, ‘She dishonoured our family,’” said Sheema Kermani, a classical dancer and women’s rights activist who co-founded Aurat March, a leading feminist movement in Pakistan. “But there is no honor in these killings. They are dishonourable murders.”

At least 405 women were victims of so-called “honour killings” last year, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights group.

They often take place in rural areas, where deeply entrenched patriarchal beliefs are used to justify violence against women. The killing of Bibi and Samalani was one of those, carried out on the outskirts of Quetta, a city in the southern province of Balochistan.

But such killings happen in all economic classes and across the country, including in large cities, and even among Pakistan’s diaspora. In January, a man lured his 14-year-old daughter, who was living in New York, back to Pakistan and killed her because of her lifestyle, including the clothing she wore.

There are several laws against gender-based violence in Pakistan, but killings like these often go unreported or unpunished, as a centuries-old tribal code trumps civil law in vast swathes of the country.

In such cases, decisions made at local council meetings, known as jirgas, prevail over Pakistan’s courts. Often, relatives — a father, a brother, an uncle — will kill women for refusing a forced marriage, seeking a divorce or engaging in relationships that the men see as violating their culture’s values.

According to the Sustainable Social Development Organisation, a Pakistani nonprofit, such killings led to criminal convictions in just 0.5% of all reported cases last year.

A 2016 law, meant to ensure that more perpetrators were punished, made it impossible for the victim’s family to pardon the accused in such cases, among other measures.

But the killings continued and even increased in number over the past few years, said Farah Zia, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Her organisation uses data provided by the police, and she said the real toll was likely to be much higher.

“The law hasn’t come to the rescue to mitigate these crimes,” Zia said. “Incidents every now and then get traction in the media, but it continues in a shameful way.”

In recent weeks, the police arrested the father and brother of an 18-year-old woman who was found dead after escaping a forced marriage in Rawalpindi, 20 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

In Pakistan’s south, an 80-year-old man confessed to murdering his 23-year-old granddaughter, with the help of his son and his brother, in the name of “honour” because, he said, she had left home after refusing an arranged marriage.

In early June, Bibi and Samalani were brought before a local tribal leader in Balochistan, who declared that they had committed an act of dishonor and ordered their execution, according to a police report seen by The New York Times.

The authorities have since charged the tribal leader and 15 other people with premeditated murder. They were also charged with terrorism, on the grounds that they had tried to incite fear and panic by posting the video.

The man who is seen shooting Bibi and Samalani in the video was still at large as of Tuesday. So was Bibi’s brother, who can be seen among the people watching the execution.

Kermani, the activist, said, “That video sends a chilling message that says, ‘Don’t let any women dare decide for their own life, because that is what we will do to them.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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