Pakistani Women Risking All to Fight for Their Rights

In Pakistan, women and rights activists are waging a war for change in Pakistan and occasionally, battles are won.

Sidra Kamwal shows pictures of herself before she was disfigured in an acid attack in Karachi, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

Kainat Soomro was 13 years old and on her way to buy a toy for her newborn niece when three men kidnapped her, held her for several days and repeatedly raped her.

Eight years later, she is still battling for justice. She sits on a steel-framed bed in her parents’ three-bedroom home, and holds her blue shawl tight around her body. When she describes the horror of her captivity her voice is barely a whisper, but it gains strength when she talks of the fight she has been waging – going to Pakistan’s courts, holding protests, rejecting the rulings of the traditional Jirga council, taking on the powerful landlord and politician who she says are protecting her attackers.

Kainaat Soomro weeps during an interview with The Associated Press in Karachi, Pakistan. (Photo: AP)

The Associated Press does not usually identify victims of sexual abuse, but Kainat has gone public with her case. Her battle for justice has inspired an award-winning 2014 movie, “Outlawed in Pakistan.” Malala Yousefzai, the Pakistani teenage Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot by the Taliban, invited Kainat to the Nobel award ceremony, and her fund has given Kainat financial help.

It is said that last year in Pakistan, at least one woman a day was killed in the name of honor — murdered for allegedly bringing shame on the family.

Attackers are rarely jailed. Human rights workers say the police often refuse to even register a case involving attacks against women, and the powerful and rich are immune.

Uzma Noorani is an activist who operates a women’s shelter in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi. She says that the national government is pandering to those who adhere to a narrow and restrictive view of Islam, which mostly targets women.

Pakistani human rights activist Uzma Noorani says rights activists are waging a war for change in Pakistan and occasionally battles are won. (Photo: AP)

It’s as if women for them are the biggest problem in Islam.

Uzma Noorani

One women’s shelter in Karachi, surrounded by two walls and protected by guards, is home to around 40 women. Some have fled abusive husbands, some have been raped, others are being hunted down by families for choosing love.

When Azra was 18, her family sold her for $5000 to an older man who passed her around to strangers. She ran away, and now she is fighting for a divorce and too afraid to leave the shelter’s walls. The courts have yet to decide on her case and mostly Azra — who is just 20 — wonders where she will go when the time comes to leave the shelter.

Azra was 18, her family sold her for $5000 to an older man who passed her around to strangers. (Photo: AP)

Sidra Kamwal was proposed to by a man who refused to take no for an answer. He pestered her and harassed her. And then one day he told her that if couldn’t have her, no one could, and threw acid in her face.

The months afterward were horrific. Her poverty meant doctors paid her little heed. One sent her home with only burn cream, but the pain and swelling were unbearable. Her nostrils had seared together. She returned to hospital and again, after three days, they sent her home.

Pakistani acid victim Sidra Kamwal looks herself in a mirror in Karachi. (Photo: AP)

It was not until she went to court that Noorani, the women’s rights activist, saw her and she received treatment. According to the Human Rights Commission, 55 acid attacks took place in Pakistan last year. To date, only 17 arrests have been made.

Unlike Kainat or Azra, Sidra’s attacker is in jail, but his family has been embraced by the neighbors. The family jeers at her, and the neighbors applaud. Sidra, with her painfully disfigured face, is the outcast.