Invisible women

The 2022 Aneesa Abbas and Arooj Abbas murder case is, unfortunately, one of the countless honour killing cases that have become a norm in Pakistan. Estimates by the Human Rights Watch World Report 2022 highlight that around 1,000 women are killed in honour killings in Pakistan in a year. In this particular case, the father of the Abbas sisters has been arrested by law-enforcement authorities in Spain. The police will now investigate how – and to what extent – the father is involved in the heinous crime (the girls’ mother had earlier nominated one of her sons in the case). The sisters were reportedly killed in Gujrat after they expressed their desire to break off their forced marriages to their cousins. The murder took place a day after the girls arrived in Pakistan. Reports suggest that the husbands of the girls wanted them to help them emigrate to Spain. The sisters refused and wanted to end their marriages – a wish that led to their death.

This isn’t the first such case. In 2018, an Italian-Pakistani woman, Sana Cheema was killed in a suspected honour killing. Some reports suggested that she did not want to be forced into an arranged marriage. No one faced punishment for her murder. Even now – after so many decades of consistent campaigns by rights activists – honour killings continue. In January this year, a father shot his daughter fatally inside a city court in Karachi. Her crime? Choosing to marry someone. Such cases are a test for law-enforcement authorities whose inaction makes Pakistan a safe haven for people who want to commit this crime but avoid doing so in places with a strong legal system (they also fear that their motive of ‘defending their culture’ will not be accepted in foreign countries).

In the past few years, we have seen an increase in extremist ideologies and with that also an alarming increase in what is known as ‘incel’ behaviour. Some months ago, a photo went viral where a young man celebrated killing women who don’t follow the widespread cultural norms. A few months before this, a video went viral on TikTok, which also made a case for ‘honour killings’. All Islamic scholars have strongly rejected the idea that such murders have any place in the religion. And yet such cases continue unabated. That the Gujrat girls’ father has been arrested is good news and indicates that the deceased women may get some justice, but we need to make sure that the decades-old unchallenged patriarchal norms that continue to give authority to men to dictate women’s lives are challenged. The murderers of the Abbas sisters took this step because of two things: one, they thought that their existence would continue to bring shame to the family, and second, they knew that for authorities in Pakistan, the victims would remain invisible forever. Had the authorities been serious about protecting women’s lives in Pakistan, they would have taken some steps to put an end to this practice. The buck did not stop at the Sana Cheema murder case, and it will likely not stop here. We are only a few weeks away from International Women’s Day, and just two months into a new year. Women continue to get killed, raped, tortured and kidnapped, and even in death somehow manage to become the holders of their entire families’ honour.