KARACHI:The primitive culture as well as the tribal system in the county is one of the major reasons behind violence against women in the country.
All four provinces are victim of honor killings and crimes against females, the Vice Chancellor of University of Karachi Professor Dr Muhammad Ajmal Khan expressed on Thursday while addressing the seminar titled: End violence against women and girls. The event was jointly organized by the KU and Management Consultancy and Training Services.
The seminar was part of 16-day long activities against violence and crimes being faced by women, and chartered by the United Nations. The KU’s VC stressed upon collective and continuous efforts to change the mindsets of the society to get desire results to prevent crimes and violence cases against females.
“We must develop a culture which has capacity to raise voice against such issues and courage to come forward and stop these problems at grassroots level; otherwise, it will be very difficult to achieve the target.”
He advised the audience to avoid self projection which is not good for individuals and society and work constructively for betterment of the society. “A very important issue has been raised and every individual and groups must play their role in spreading awareness among their circles of family, friends and relatives and working and worship places so that we can practically do something to end violence against women and girls.”
Dr Ajmal Khan also advised that whenever you asked to bring changes, you must educate the society and spread awareness among masses but if you practically implement all those changes on yourself, it would help you in achieving the desire results in short span of time. “We cannot bring changes by preaching only. We cannot force people to adopt changes, but along with teaching, practical approach and in-depth analysis, can help in getting positive results.”
The KU VC stated that without eradicating socio-economics barriers violence against women and girls could not be stopped as they are one of the major supporters behind such crimes.
The former Inspector General of Sindh Police, Niaz Siddiki, shed lights on how society can prevent honor killings and other crimes against female. “All kind of systems are made and run by humans, if we want to make a change and improve the society we have to change ourselves first.” He informed the audience that honor killing is homicide crime and one cannot be a complaint, lawyer, evident, judge and executor at same time. Sharing the details of honor crimes, he mentioned that 87 percent women and 13 percent men are victim of violence in the society.
According to him, a recent survey report shows that close relatives were involved in honor crimes and killings. He highlighted that as per report, 21 percent brothers, 15 percent fathers, 11 percent each intimate partners and cousins, relatives nine percent, spouse seven percent, unknown factors three percent and women one percent are involved in such incidents.
“Although, everyone is this country claimed to be a good Muslim but, this is so unfortunate that women and men are killed in name of honor despite that fact killing in the religion is strongly prohibited and there are numbers of verses in the Holy Book Quran in this regard.” He said that we all know that killing is against the basic of Islam but people do not show any resistance when such cases occurred. Siddiki termed that silence is promoting the violence in the society.
“In honor cases, men are often killed while women are regular victims in these crimes.” He mentioned that Punjab has more honor related crime rate whereas Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are second, third and fourth respectively. He informed that in rural Sindh, honor crime victims are buried without offering funeral prayers, shrouds and no other bodies are allowed be to laid in those graveyards.
Meanwhile, Sindh Chapter President of UN Women, Kapil Dev, mentioned that most of the victims of violence do not have access to social and mainstream media that is why such program are being conducted so that awareness could be spread in those areas as well. “This is very unlucky that crime data against women are not available in the country and masses did not rise voices against honor crimes.”
The Chief Executive Officer of a local television, Faiz Borohi, claimed that positive use of social media could help in identifying and stopping the violence cases. He also offered stipend base internship program for the KU students which was accepted with gratitude by the varsity’s vice chancellor.
Fouzia Tariq of Management Consultancy and Training Services through presentation informed the audience about the categories and reasons of honor crimes and how to stop them. She encourage participates to speak and rise up against such crimes and teach their children how to behalf with females rather there are relatives or not.
She also informed audience about recent most cases of honor killing in different parts of the country. “Every third women faces violence whereas 137 female become victims every day rather at home or away,” she added.