Sunday, October 31, 2010

Sodomy: Pakistan’s national hobby

Three boys have been accused of committing sodomy with a 15-year-old boy in a hostel associated with Islamabad Institute of Medical Sciencce, according to the media reports. Two weeks ago, an NGO report revealed that 1,216 children had been sexually abused in the first half of this year as compared to 968 recorded cases in the corresponding period last year.
This is the first reported case in which a gang, whose members are age fellows of the victim, has committed sodomy. Many such cases go un-reported due to shame and other social stigmas associated with sodomy.
My father did a murder trial in which the father (accused) of a boy (aged 12) killed a person in the village. My dad represented the accused. The accused’s son went in to the fields to defecate. When the boy was sitting on the ground after removing his shalwar (trouser), the deceased came at the spot and trid to commit sodomy. The boy was lucky. He fled from the scene, leaving his shalwar there and coming all the way to his home. He narrated the whole incidnet to his father. His father took out his handgun and murdered the person who tried to sodomise his son. The father was given death sentence by the trial court, however the high court converted his death sentencce into life sentence recently. Sitting in the court room, while my dad was arguing the case before Lahore High Court Chief Justice Khawaja Muhammad Sharif, I was thinking about the boy’s father in the jail and the boy in the village.
The father has given his son social protection and courage to roam in the village streets without a honour. I am sure the sodomy in that village must have stopped after that incident. But few are courageous enough to make the issue public. Many vicitms and their families sulk for the rest of their lives.
I am also aware of some cases wherein the act of sodomy was filmed for future blackmailing. The video clip would be circulated in surrounding villages within the couple of hours of the sodomy. The victim in one such case brought the case in the court. The accused were punished for life. The victim went to England afterwards.
Laws in Pakistan are very strict about sodomy, but they are unable to give confidence to victims or their families to approach courts.
In the area adjoining Jhelum cantonment. A young boy was sodomised by two people who were in their mid-twenties. They took the boy from his house on the pretext of playing cricket with him and sodomised him in a deserted walled-property. The boy’s father came to our chamber and narrated the whole episode to me and my father. He was poor and we offered him our services for free. He was very nervous and would visit us daily. Despite all our assurances, he was reluctanct to go to the court.
He opted for an out-of-court-settlement with the accused. He told us that his own family elders were pressing him to give up the case. He let the accused go scot-free without even claiming come monetary compensation. I gave him the toll-free number of a non-government organisation who helps rehabiliatate sodomy victims, but I am sure he would not have called it.
The irony is that the poor boy is still living in the same area where the culprits with grins on their faces cross him daily in the streets.

4 comments:

  1. surprised to read such a shameful act being done even in madrassas. i think we need to aware people about this.THIS is ridiculos in ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF PAKISTAN.

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