Tragedy in Kohistan

Back in 2012, there was a brief period of outrage in the media when five girls and three men were allegedly killed in Kohistan on the orders of a jirga for the ‘crime’ of singing and dancing at a wedding. The Supreme Court even held a hearing in the matter and sent a fact-finding mission of human rights activists to Kohistan to find out what happened there. Neither the mission nor the Supreme Court could ascertain whether these killings had taken place or if the jirga had ordered them to be killed. In fact, to this day we still do not know what happened to the women in the video – or even who they really were. There is reason to believe that these people were killed since a court in Peshawar convicted five people for the murder of the men in the video. But the fate of the women is still unknown. That they have seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth would indicate that they were indeed killed. Now, a report filed in the Supreme Court by the district and sessions judge in Kohistan claims that the women were either killed or have fled out of fear for their fate. Two women were presented before him. Although they claimed to be the women in the video of the wedding, the judge concluded that they were not.

It is scandalous that  in six years    of investigation into this case no one is still willing to say with any certainty that the women were murdered. Kohistan may be remote and mountainous but it is still part of Pakistan and is bound to follow the laws of the country. It should not be that difficult to enforce the writ of the state there. Our denial about the fate of the women shows the lengths we will go to in order to ignore such blatantly unconstitutional and criminal judgements. At this point there is little chance that the women are still alive. The advocate general of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa claims that the KP administration has verified that the women are alive. But neither he nor any other government official has been able to produce them in front of the court. It has become increasingly obvious that the fix is in. Denials still come in from the leaders of those who are said to have called the jirga. The story from the picturesque mountain valley has had a terribly ugly ending. Only the courts can now ensure that those who ordered and carried out the killings are punished, along with those who have stalled the investigation for the last six years. Whether this will happen will say a great deal about our society and its future.