Murder Defended as “Tribal Custom”
Did you hear about the case of five woman being shot and then buried alive in Pakistan? No? Well, pry yourself away from the Obama/McCain/Palin/Biden chatter for a second and I’ll tell you all about it.
Balochistan Senator Sardar Israrullah Zehri stunned the upper house on Friday when he defended the recent incident of burying alive three teenage girls and two women in his province, saying it was part of “our tribal custom.”
Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah of the PML-Q raised the issue citing a newspaper report that the girls, three of them aged between 16 and 18 years, had been buried alive a month ago for wishing to marry of their own will.
Just wrap your brain around that for a second. It’s pretty easy to get complacent in your Western, liberal bubble and forget that all these rights that we take for granted do not exist for so many people. I can happily live with my partner, avoid marriage or choose to end a relationship with next to no consequences, while on the other side of the world five women get shot and buried alive for wishing to choose their marriage partners while government officials defend it as a “tribal custom”. This is a horrific example of brutality. No one has been arrested for this outrage yet and the incident is being investigated. Giving up bustiers and nail polish seems like a small, insignificant and painless gesture.
I already live my life free of most feminine accessories. How about if next time I get invited to a wedding, instead of politely declining, instead I launch into one of my speeches about how marriage is a tool of the patriarchy? This may just result in my friends giving me a blank look, but it seems preferable to the alternatives.
