Digital Extra

  3/13/00
'When there is injustice . . . you have to go on fighting'
The quest for women's rights.

By RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Hina Jilani says she does not consider herself a brave woman.

Indeed, she says, ``I am terribly frightened at times -- not only for my own security, but for those around me and especially my children.''

But the Pakistani lawyer and women's rights activist says there comes a time when even safety worries can no longer be seen as crucial when the issue becomes too big and too important. ``So you take your chances.''

Jilani, who will be 48 next Sunday, was one of the closing speakers yesterday at Amnesty International-USA's annual general meeting at The Westin Providence.

Just 11 months ago, in her law office in the Punjab province of Pakistan, Jilani had her own brush with death. She was counseling a young woman in her law office when the woman's mother, a brother and another man came in and shot her client dead. A gunman fired a shot at Jilani, too, but missed.

The woman's crime: in the eyes of the family, she had ``dishonored'' them by seeking a divorce from the husband who had abused her for years.

Strange as it may seem to Westerners, these ``honor killings'' are taken for granted in many parts of Pakistan, so much so that hundreds of Pakistani women die each year at the hands of husbands, brothers and parents who rarely are prosecuted for their crimes.

Jilani, who has been campaigning to get the courts and government to crack down on these killings, has since received a number of death threats herself and has been publicly condemned for trying to change the status quo.

Reflecting on all this yesterday, Jilani told her largely under-30 audience that no human rights activist likes having to take up an unpopular cause.

But there are times, she said, when there is simply no other choice.

``When there is injustice, or some violent action taken by the majority, you have to be the minority fighting against that,'' she said. ``You have no alternative. You have to go on fighting, regardless of the sense of isolation you might feel in a society which is prejudiced and insensitive to the right of others.''

But she acknowledged that going up against powerful forces is rarely easy. ``And you have to be prepared for the onslaught.''

Yesterday marked the final day of a three-day national Amnesty International Conference that drew activists from around the country as well as various parts of the world.

In a departure from tradition, the event this year had a single theme: ``Women's Human Rights: Challenging Obstacles; Celebrating Triumphs.''

Sheila Dauer, the Women's Human Rights Program director, noted that some of the problems confronting women in some parts of the world may sound exotic to American ears -- be it honor killings in Pakistan or, in India, the practice of bride burning, or dowry death.

This occurs when the groom's family is not satisfied with the amount it has received in dowry. If the bride's family is unable to give more, an attempt is made to have her divorced or make her conveniently die so that the groom can marry someone else and get a new dowry.

``Sometimes'' says Dauer, ``the families bring the new brides into the burn wards of hospitals, and say the bride had been in a kitchen accident. In fact, kerosene had been poured on her and lit. There were 12,000 such cases reported in India in just a single year a couple years ago.

``For Americans this is a horrifying form of domestic violence. But you have to know that the level of domestic violence in this country is hardly any lower than in most third-world countries. Here, though, women are burned with cigarettes, or they've had acid thrown on them. Or they've been knifed and beat up and punched.''

While it is easy for many human rights activists to become depressed at the extent of the brutality, Dauer said the last year has had its bright side.

For example, she said, Amnesty has been concerned about the high numbers of female inmates in U.S. prisons who are raped by prison guards, she said, and now after more lobbying by Amnesty, more states are moving to make the practice illegal.

``You would think that this sort of thing is already illegal, but amazingly enough in some states it's not. What we're talking about are correctional officials who pray on female inmates, who rape them outright or sexually coerce them into doing sexual acts they don't want to do.

``For example, some guards have told women they can't see their children on visiting day unless they have sex. In some cases, women have had to have sex in order to have shampoo or sanitary supplies.''

The reason this happens so often in U.S. prisons, she says, is that 70 percent of the guards in federal women's prisons are male, compared to 9 percent of the federal prisons in Canada.

And then there's the matter of how the law is worded. ``In many of the states, when a woman tries to bring a complaint about sexual misconduct against a guard, the prison officials say it was her fault, or that she manipulated the guard or seduced him, or that it was consensual.''

But during the last year, Dauer said, Amnesty conducted campaigns in eight states to have the law changed so that ``consent'' could not be used as an excuse by a correctional official. The campaign worked. Just last week, West Virginia passed such a law, and two other states, including Massachusetts, recently did so as well.

``Now we have to work on Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Kentucky,'' she said. ``And we have to get Arizona to change its law, which makes the female inmate culpable.''

In an interview yesterday after her talk, Jilani, the Pakistani activist, said it is important to understand that Pakistan's population is not homogeneous, and that not everybody in Pakistan supports the notion of ``honor killing.''

In fact, she said, in the wake of the killing of her client, she said, there seems to be a ``growing consciousness among the population in respect to their own rights and their own dignity'' to the point where the government itself is getting ready to clamp down on the practice by making a ``slight change'' in the law that will make it harder for prosecutors and judges to look the other way.

She said that while some supporters of honor killing will sometimes cite the Koran, ``it is not because of their belief in Islam that they are doing it, but because there are powerful economic and social forces that feel if women were allowed to exercise their autonomy, their own authority is in some way undermined.''

She's convinced that the only true hope for reform is in a return to democratic government in Pakistan.

``For us, democracy is not just an idea. Outsiders say we need stability more than democracy, but without democracy our hopes for human rights cannot be fulfilled,'' she said. ``People will not be able to improve their situation unless they are part of the decision-making.''

More Women in R.I. history