When Rapists Walk Free, Kristof, New York Times

[imenja]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
When Rapists Walk Free
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 5, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/opinion/05kristof.html?incamp=article_popular_2&oref=login

"One of the gutsiest people on earth is Mukhtaran Bibi. And after this week, she'll need that courage just to survive.

Mukhtaran, a tall, slim young woman who never attended school as a child, lives in a poor and remote village in the Punjab area of Pakistan. As part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped. She begged and cried, but four of her neighbors immediately stripped her and carried out the sentence. Then her tormenters made her walk home naked while her father tried to shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers.

Mukhtaran was meant to be so shamed that she would commit suicide. But in a society where women are supposed to be soft and helpless, she proved indescribably tough, and she found the courage to live. She demanded the prosecution of her attackers, and six were sent to death row. . .

A Pakistani court overturned the death sentences of all six men convicted in the attack on her and ordered five of them freed. They are her neighbors and will be living alongside her. Mukhtaran was in the courthouse and collapsed in tears, fearful of the risk this brings to her family."