Police have arrested more than 20 people who they say were involved in ordering the rape of a 16-year-old as punishment for a rape her brother had committed.
The BBC reports a teenage boy allegedly raped his 12-year-old cousin near Multan, Pakistan earlier this month. As punishment for his alleged crime, a local council ordered the brother of the girl who was assaulted to rape the attacker's 16-year-old sister, according to police. Dawn, a Pakistani news outlet, reports the 16-year-old was raped in front of her parents.
According to the BBC, an officer said that police had registered complaints against 25 people, but the boy who allegedly raped the 12-year-old has not been caught. Reuters spoke to a local police officer who said said a total of 29 people were involved in the revenge crime.
"A jirga [village council] had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl as punishment, as her brother had raped a 12-year-old," police official Allah Baksh told AFP, according to the BBC.
The BBC reports that jirgas, which are generally made up of area elders, are technically illegal in Pakistan and have been condemned for ordering "honor killings" and similar revenge rapes. But this specific council was unique, according to The Washington Post, since it was comprised of men who were all part of the same extended family.
According to the Post, something else stands out about this case—while jirgas have been known to order similar punishments, in this instance, "someone spoke up." The rapes were reported to the Violence Against Women Center in Multan, and authorities filed complaints against the family members allegedly involved.
The Post also points out that, according to a 2011 Thomson Reuters Foundation expert poll, Pakistan is the third most dangerous country in the world for women, underscored by the fact that, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, more than 1,000 girls and women in the country are killed each year in so-called "honor killings".
While authorities did arrest those involved in this case, Amnesty International has spoken out to say that more must be done.
“Pakistan’s authorities must end impunity for sexual violence and crack down on the so-called village councils that prescribe horrific crimes against women, often in revenge for acts committed by others. For far too long, there has been an indulgence of these unspeakably cruel practices,” Nadia Rahman, Amnesty International’s Pakistan Campaigner, said in a statement. “No cultural traditions can justify attacks on women. Violence against women is always the opposite of justice. Women’s bodies are not commodities to be bartered for the settling of scores. The perpetrators must face punishments that reflect the gravity of their crime, through fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.”
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