Human rights groups have praised Pakistan for overhauling its Islamic sex laws, but for women like Quratulain Sattar, it is still an uphill battle against trumped-up charges under the harsh legislation.
The 25-year-old medical trainee’s father lodged adultery charges against Quratulain and her husband, Faraz Shah, after failing to force her to marry the man of his choice.
Now pregnant and in hiding, she complains that even if she and Faraz are acquitted, they remain under threat for disgracing her family’s “honour” under Pakistan’s atavistic tribal system.
“The new amendments eased my legal battle but I am still in fear of my life and have to run from one place to another,” Quratulain said at a shelter run by a charity in the southern port city of Karachi.
“We are husband and wife, we love each other and cannot leave each other,” she added.
Quratulain married Faraz Shah in early 2005.
Coming from a conservative ethnic Pashtun background — the same ethnicity as the Taliban — her father filed a case arguing that she was already married to another man and that Shah had kidnapped her and forced her to wed.
The couple sheltered in Karachi at the private Edhi Centre, Pakistan’s largest charity. They also worked as volunteers following the October 2005 Pakistan earthquake, which killed more than 73Â 000 people.
Her family’s accusations are “completely false”, she said.
“I was forcibly engaged with my cousin Bilal in [the conservative north-western city of] Mardan but never married. They are now coming out with fake witnesses,” she said.
“I did nothing wrong as my mother and brothers knew about it. They had even met Faraz and liked him, but then they all changed and followed my father’s attitude, and rejected my husband.”
Her father and other family members were not available for comment despite repeated attempts.
The case is still active and is due to be heard soon at a court in Karachi.
In July, President Pervez Musharraf changed the 27-year-old Islamic “Hudood” Laws to make adultery a bailable offence, leading to the release of hundreds of women awaiting charges — and meaning Quratulain would not go to jail.
Then last month Parliament passed a hotly contested Bill with further, major changes.
These included distinguishing between rape and adultery. Formerly rape victims had to produce four Muslim male witnesses to prove the allegation or else face adultery charges themselves.
The reforms will also reduce penalties for adultery to a maximum of five years jail, when it was previously — although theoretically — death by stoning.
Quratulain says she will benefit from another change that means witnesses who give false statements can be jailed.
“In my case fake witnesses were produced to prove that I was kidnapped by Faraz and that I was already married when I got married with Faraz,” she said.
But legal changes alone are unlikely to solve the couple’s problems.
“Their fate has been decided and they must pay for disgracing the family honour,” an Edhi centre volunteer, who accompanied the couple to court, quoted one of her relatives as saying.
The family of Quratulain’s husband has also suffered.
“My wife’s father put my parents under illegal detention, threatened them to force me to divorce, got them arrested and they are still under threat despite being out of jail,” Shah said.
Quratulain said she could not sit her final-year examinations at college as its management came under pressure to expel her.
Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami religious party also supported her father as he pursued the case, she alleges.
A female provincial legislator for Pakistan’s main alliance of religious parties, which includes Jamaat-e-Islami, said Quratulain’s actions were “not right” and she should have tried to convince her mother.
But the young woman’s parents should have avoided the police and the courts and tried to sort the matter out between themselves, added Kulsoom Nizamani, the MP.
Quratulain says she may have to leave Pakistan to stay safe.
“I only pray that one day my parents realise that it’s time to accept us, but perhaps tribal customs and the sick mentality of the conservative forces prevents them,” she said.
Anis Haroon, chief of the Karachi-based Aurat (Women) Foundation, said the changes to the Hudood laws were “certainly a step forward, but it’s still a long way to go to repeal all these black laws against women.
“And despite these changes, women in our society remain prisoners of tribal and conservative customs, which must be abolished.” — AFP