Pregnant teenager faces death decree by local tribe

A pregnant 17-year-old from rural Sindh is seeking refuge in the southern port city of Karachi in an attempt to escape death by “karo-kari”, or honour killing, says a member of the provincial opposition who is campaigning to save her. Rozina Ujjar was divorced by her husband after he spotted her standing outside her house, in a small village in rural Sindh, as a 15-year-old schoolboy passed by. A local assembly of tribal elders, or jirga, then declared the woman "kari," (or liable to honour killing) Humaira Alvani, a Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) legislator in the Sindh provincial assembly, told IRIN from Karachi on Wednesday. "I've been trying to protect her. First, I've tried to secure her safety. Then, yesterday, I took this issue to the assembly and asked the government why they are not making a law against this custom of honour killings," she said, adding that Rozina was now in Darul Aman, a government-run home for destitute women. "Yesterday, when I spoke in the assembly, she (Rozina) was also present. I pointed her out to the media and everyone else and said this is the girl who is going to be "kari" and said the government should take the initiative to protect her, to give her life security," she stressed. In her statement before a magistrate, Rozina said that she is scared that they are going to kill her, Alvani maintained. "The boy [referred to as "karo"] was only made to pay a penalty of Rs. 80,000, so he is safe now," she said. A rights activist from the Aurat [Woman’s] Foundation, a women's rights and advocacy organisation, said that Alvani had contacted them to step up the campaign for Ujjar's safety and that they were currently waiting for more details before taking the case up. "Rozina wasn't in a state to talk until now," Nuzhat Shirin, the regional coordinator for the organisation's Legislative Watch Programme, told IRIN from Karachi. The authorities now say they will register a case, Shirin said, noting that they had asked Alvani to inform them if this did not happen. "This is just another example of the way tradition is misused against women and the fact that, despite statements made very loudly in public by officials that a lot is being done to change the status of women, nothing is actually happening on the ground because district-level officials don't act to prevent jirgas from meting out such verdicts," Kamila Hyat, the joint-director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IRIN from the eastern city of Lahore. If someone is accused of committing a crime, they have to appear before a court under the normal, legal procedure in the country, she said. "The fact that jirgas are allowed to give verdicts like this means that the system is not working in the sense that top officials are not passing down orders to district level officials about what to do. That's the basic crux of the problem," Hyat stressed. According to an annual report published by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), over 600 women were killed in the name of honour across Pakistan in 2003. But Alvani claimed that the figure only represented the cases that were reported to authorities. "Unofficially, there are over 3,000 women who have fallen prey to honour killings in this year in Sindh. Officially, the reported cases are 600. But, unofficially, the number is 3,000 women killed in the name of honour in Sindh alone," she maintained.