Forced marriages canceled after protests in Pakistan
By Martin Fackler
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, July 27, 2002
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Four men convicted of murder agreed to send eight young female relatives to marry the men of the victims' family to settle the blood debt -- a deal not uncommon in poor areas of central Pakistan, where traditional law still rules.
But national outrage over the number and ages of the girls -- including one as young as 5 -- being offered to men old enough to be their great-grandfathers forced the families to cancel the arrangement this week. And now, the four men again face execution.
"It is quite common in the area to marry daughters to the family of someone you wrong. But usually the ages of the girl and the man are taken into consideration," said Mohammed Asad Malik, son of a former governor of Punjab province, where their village, Musakhen, is located.
The four men, who came from the same family, were convicted and sentenced to hang for the 1988 murder of two men from another family in Musakhen, 140 miles southwest of Islamabad. Both families share the same last name, Khan.
Under the deal reached Tuesday, the girls were offered in exchange for an agreement to release their male relatives. Although the death sentences were handed down by a Pakistani court, the country's Islamic law stipulates that the victim's family can ask for clemency.
In addition to the girls, the family of the two slain men received "blood money" worth $130,000, Malik said. Local officials said one girl was the daughter of one of the condemned men and the others were nieces, cousins or other relatives.
The 5-year-old wasn't to have been married until she was older, said Malik and other villagers. Another of the proposed matches coupled an 18-year-old woman with an 80-year-old man.
For two of the girls, the marriages were halted just in time. A 14-year-old and a 15-year-old had already finished the wedding ceremonies and were about to be sent to the homes of their husbands-to-be, aged 77 and 55 respectively, when village elders intervened.
Malik said both men already had wives, as is allowed under Islamic law. One had children older than his prospective bride.
Not going to the husbands' homes meant that the marriages could still be dissolved without stigmatizing the teenagers, Malik said.
Mohammed Babar, assistant superintendent of the jail where the convicted men are held, said no execution date had been set. Other officials said the four could still be spared the gallows if the families work out another, less controversial settlement.
Although this case drew attention because it was extreme, experts said many similar deals involving forced marriages take place every year. They said no one knows how many because most go unreported.
"Women continue to be seen as possessions of men, as something that can be just given away, like cattle or gold," said Kamila Hyat, joint director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a government rights monitor.
The government has promised to investigate the case for endangering the rights of women and children.
The arranged-marriage deal "appears to have been reached in violation of the law of the land and against the norms of the civilized world," Chief Justice Shaikh Riaz Ahmad said. |
