Chewing on a biscuit and gurgling with laughter, two-year-old Rabia plays with her elder brothers outside their mud-walled farmhouse, amid a sea of green wheat in Kutcha Chohan in southern Punjab. The barefoot toddler flashes a smile as her first words tumble out. But that innocence will be short-lived if local elders have their way, because Rabia is already promised in marriage — to a man 38 years her senior, Guardian reported. A village court determined her fate after her uncle, Muhammad Akmal, was accused of sleeping with another man's wife. After an hour-long deliberation, the elders found him guilty and fined him 230,000 rupees. They also ordered him to marry his niece to the wronged man, 40-year-old Altaf Hussain, once she passed her 14th birthday.
| ... when Altaf will be 52... |
Rabia's mother, Maqsood Mai, who is separated from her husband, had no say in the matter.
| ... lucky as she is not to be under a pile or rocks or on fire... |
But her other uncles were furious. "This is a terrible crime," said Muhammad Nawaz, sitting outside the house near the Indus river in southern Punjab. He vowed to move the family before Rabia could be taken away. "This is the first time in the history of our tribe that such a thing has happened," he said. But Mr Nawaz is wrong.
| If he read Rantburg he'd know better... |
Although punchayats (village courts) are illegal, they still hold sway in rural Pakistan, and verdicts that target the innocent — particularly women — are common. Poor farmers still turn to informal justice systems, known variously as jirgas or punchayats, to settle disputes about land, honour and money. The courts have many attractions. In contrast with the plodding, expensive and often corrupt public courts, a punchayat can be convened at a few hours' notice in a house or under a tree. The gathered elders act quickly, cost little, and are unequivocal in their judgments. But the justice rendered is often rough, say human rights activists, who say punchayats favour the rich, fuel old notions of bloody revenge, and perpetuate feudal inequalities. "They nearly always decide in favour of the most powerful," said Rashid Rehman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in Multan. "In these areas the people are living in the 16th century. And still the state is sleeping. Why?"
| Probably because it's stuck somewhere around 200 A.D., busy declining and falling... |
Punchayat decisions can be as bizarre as they are cruel. A punchayat in Lodhran district last year ordered seven women to divorce their husbands, in an effort to end a feud between two clans with marriage ties. Their 25 children were handed over to the fathers. In another case, a woman claimed by two rival men had her fate decided by the flip of a coin.
| It wasn't worth asking her what the hell she wanted, of course... |
Punchayats are also central to the phenomenon of karo kari, or honour killings. Oxfam estimates that between 1,200 and 1,800 women are murdered by their relatives every year in the name of preserving family honour. Many killings are sanctioned by punchayats. |