Pakistan, the Taliban mirror in its treatment of women

Not a day goes by in Pakistan without one or more cases of sexual assaults, individual or in groups, kidnappings and rapes, accompanied by all kinds of humiliations. The burqa is not customary in the country, but the actual condition of women is not much different, in terms of lack of recognition of their rights, from that of their counterparts in Afghanistan under the iron rule of a Taliban government.

The latest such event took place in Lahore's Iqbal Park on 14 August, in the vicinity of the Minar-e-Pakistan Tower, a symbol of the country since 1968. A mob of more than 400 men assaulted a woman who was at the time filming a video sequence for the social network TikTok. The mob shook their victim, stripped her of her clothes and sexually abused her at will, before robbing her of her jewellery, money and mobile phone. Some of the assailants filmed the scene and broadcast it on the internet, in an action that denotes both their usual vainglory and impunity.

This widespread dissemination has sparked new protests throughout Pakistan, spurred by both social networks and some media outlets, especially the newspaper Dawn, which has taken the opportunity to launch a harsh condemnation of both the government in Islamabad and Pakistani society itself. In the land of the pure," the newspaper's editorial states, "this incident further cuts the knife into the deep wound inflicted by misogyny in Pakistan, where a toxic mentality allows not only repeated assaults but worse, the blaming of the victims".

The latter trait is all the more glaring given that the current prime minister, former world cricket champion Imran Khan, recently associated the way women dress with the assaults they suffer. In a controversial television interview, Imran Khan said that "if a woman is scantily clad it will have a strong impact on men, who are not mere robots, this is common sense". Statements that have caused strong controversy. The most radical have supported the logic exhibited by the Prime Minister. This is not the feeling of Pakistani human rights organisations and feminist and women's dignity associations, which issued a joint statement condemning the fact that victims of sexual assault are considered "provocateurs" of such attacks, and therefore guilty of tempting men.

The press release denounces that only 0.3% of reports of abductions and rapes result in a criminal conviction, and that it has become a long-established custom for victims who dare to report to Pakistani police stations to face taunts from the officers themselves, resulting in considerable reluctance to come forward and seek justice.

Pakistan, ranked 151st in terms of inequality by the World Economic Forum, is certainly not the only country where sexual violence occurs, but it is one of the few where society itself and the state apparatus offer perpetrators a wide range of excuses and assurances that lead them to feel unpunished.

These feelings seem to accompany Pakistani communities wherever they settle. Suffice it to recall that last year the enormous number of rapes and all kinds of sexual assaults on minors and adolescents came to light in the UK, cases known to the British police, who preferred to look the other way, following the trend established by their political authorities of respecting multiculturalism, and thus associating this type of crime with the particular way of being and behaving of their citizens of Pakistani origin.

Pakistan is therefore not the place to flee to for terrified Afghan women who fear they will be mercilessly punished as soon as they inadvertently show an ankle or step out of the street door without the company of a legitimate male guardian. The country also struggles with many other Islamic countries to showcase its anti-Western radicalism. Parties such as Tehrik-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) have waged campaigns against Europe in general, and France in particular, after President Emmanuel Macron defended the right to caricature Muhammad in the name of freedom of expression.