Pakistani girl flees in fear of honour killing

by Athar Husain

DAHARKI, Pakistan, (Reuters)

Her nose is bandaged from the bridge to the tip because, she says, her husband and his relatives tried to cut it off.

If they catch her again, 15-year old Lakhmira is sure she'll be killed.

Married just four months ago, this skinny girl will be lucky if she doesn't end up in one of the nameless graves in burial grounds reserved for "karo kari", or honour killing, victims in the tribal badlands of Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

Meeting secretly on a moonless night at her hiding place among the marshes surrounding Daharki town, 550 km (340 miles) north of the port city of Karachi, Lakhmira sobbed and shook with fear as she recounted her nightmare. "If someone does not come to our rescue I will commit suicide," Lakhmira moaned softly, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"In our culture it is impossible for a girl to live after being declared a kari even if it is a false charge. Only God knows the truth."

Literally a "black woman", a "kari" is a woman accused of having sex outside of marriage, while "karo" is the male version. The custom is rooted in tribalism, although strict interpretations of Islam's hudood penal code also rule that adulterers should be stoned to death. Lakhmira's 40-year-old husband, Dilawar, declared her a "kari" after she told people that his nephews were molesting her, wounding male pride in an influential family of the Shar tribe. Official estimates put the number of honour killings or karo kari murders at over 4,000 between 2001 and 2004.

The government enacted a law earlier this year specifically banning honour killings, as perpetrators have received lenient treatment even in cases where murder charges were brought. But little has changed, rights groups say.

"There is also no evidence that honour killings have decreased after this law," said Kamila Hyat, a director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

Hyat said she had not heard of any prosecutions for the crime, and while 200 such killings had been reported to the HRCP between January and July, many more would have gone unreported.

Lakhmira lives in Ghotki, a district dominated by chieftains, or sardars, who control feudal and tribal communities in a region that has the highest number of "kari" killings in Sindh.

PLENTY OF BODIES, NO CASES

Around Daharki there are three graveyards where "kari" victims are dumped without proper Muslim burial rituals.

"There is a place close by where the women are brought and killed and then cut up into pieces and buried quietly," villager Mohammad Ali Shar told Reuters, warning that it was risky to go there because of the sardar's orders.

Other villagers overcame their fear to guide a Reuters journalist and photographer to one alleged burial ground at Dah Jampur, some 35 km (22 miles) north of Daharki, where surrounded by cotton fields some 40 unmarked mud graves lie untended.

District police officer Iqbal Kadri says the bodies are there but he cannot make a case because of the fear and reluctance of victims' families to come forward due to social stigma. When cases do come to light, it is often because they involve large sums of money, or property.

A local journalist told Reuters that around a dozen women are declared kari every month in Ghotki district.

"It is convenient to declare a man or woman karo or kari to settle old enmities, property and marital disputes," he said. Sometimes a sardar brokers a compensation deal or arranges for the woman to be sold, but often it ends in death, he added.

SOCIAL REBEL GIVES REFUGE

In Lakhmira's case she was accused of having an affair with a man she says she has never even met.

Told that she would have to face the sardar with the accusation, Lakhmira took refuge in her parents' house.

But when her husband and relatives came looking for her she fled to a neighbour's where she was caught.

Only the intervention of a respected elder woman, who insisted on mercy by invoking the Koran, saved Lakhmira from death. But before she escaped the men began to mutilate her nose - a customary disfigurement for women deemed "dishonoured".

Dressed in a grubby shalwar kameez, the long tunic and baggy pants Pakistani women wear, and wrapped in a frayed shawl, Lakhmira still possesses a clear complexion and striking features despite the dirty, bloodstained bandage dominating her face.

Police refused to register a case against her husband after the assault, she said.

Instead, when Dilawar and his friends returned looking for Lakhmira at her parents' home, they accused her elderly father of attacking his son-in-law. The police then arrested the old man. "I feel completely helpless," Lakhmira cried, as much distressed by her father's plight as her own.

She is now living under the protection of a local leftist leader, Mandal Shah, who has a reputation for defying tribal customs. He has his own stronghold in the semi-arid marshlands, otherwise considered no-go areas, ruled by sardars and infested with dacoits, or bandits.

Shah persuaded the frightened girl to meet with Reuters journalists, who were only able to reach her under cover of darkness after a two-hour drive, weaving over a sun-cracked clay path between muddy pools of salty water.

Shah feared he couldn't protect Lakhmira indefinitely.

"I don't know for how long we can manage to provide her a safe haven," Shah said.