Aurat March Karachi, which organized the annual Women’s Day protest march, has called on Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to apologize or step down over her remarks about the alleged rape of a Lahore student.
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Maryam’s Controversy Against Campus Incident
The organization criticized the use of ‘vile and regressive language’ by Maryam and said that it thought that the CM was ‘wrong and unworthy to represent the public and, at the same time, disrespect the safety, rights, and dignity of survivors of sexual violence’.
In the press conference on Wednesday, Maryam dismissed ‘circulated on social media’ concerning the alleged rape of the student within the campus as a fabricated story.
He found an issue out of a situation that was never there in the first place according to the chief minister. About a young woman being accused of being involved in the incident, Maryam Nawaz said: “This girl is completely paak saaf, false allegations are being leveled against her”.
Maryam added: “I am not only a CM but also a woman – this is my red line.” “If a rape had happened, I would have acted before anyone said anything.”
In the Aurat March, the leaders of the march argued that the statement made by the chief minister that Malala’s girl was ‘pure’ and all allegations against her ‘reinforces the patriarchal belief that women’s worth is sexual for the fact that they are sexually untouched’. They said that the language was much more reactionary when it came to sexual violence, specifically rape.
The organization wondered if victim-survivors of rape are ‘somehow impure and clean’; within this piece, 21,900+25 cases of reported rape have been documented in Pakistan from 2017 to 2021 entirely, while uncounted cases of rape remain unheard of due to fear, shame as well as stigma.
Aurat March said the chief minister’s words discouraged survivors to come forward and put more pressure on the survivors rather than the perpetrators and creates a culture that “protects rapists and vilifies those they brutalize”.
They noted that when the so-called rape was presented as something the girl was wrongfully accused of, it sent a message that in cases of rape, the blame for the accusation rested on the victim but not the accused rapist.
Adding to that, she said that such false reports are aimed at tarnishing the reputation and ‘izzat’ of the family of the victim-survivor. Far from this, the only person who has no honor to lose in the crime of rape is the rapist.”
They wondered how formally educated persons in the 21st century particularly a woman as chief minister was being part of “age-old rape apologist narratives”.
“It is strictly wrong for public officials to emulate the same repulsive defense as that employed by rapists or murderers in the name of honor” This is not just reckless; it’s a betrayal of every woman who has fought for her right to be treated as a human being.”
It explained that this organisation believed in fighting against misogyny and patriarchy all around the world even if the person is with the opposite party.
The incident
Last week, rumors of the rape of the student made rounds on social media, and several days ago, a security guard of the college was arrested for his involvement in the said crime.
Offensive over such an incident, students came forward on various social sites and protested in front of various colleges in the city. Violence erupted when demonstrators skirmished with the security detail of a college one of the days. In later hours, police and students clashed and 28 persons got injured.
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