According to statistics present on different forums, cases of sexual harassment have increased manifold over years. Almost 10 children everyday suffer from some sort of sexual harassment (child sexual abuse), and number of adult cases is also more or less similar. Which means a number of these tragic incidents occur every day, but fail to get attention.
Recently cases like that of Noor Muqaddam, Quratulain, and Saima, surfaced and circulated all over media. All three of them died, one after one, due to domestic and sexual violence. Society took notice of the cases when these girls were no more. Moreover in recent past, Zainab Alert Bill came up as a policy, after little Zainab had passed away.
Why do victims in Pakistan have to die, in order to get justice, or at least to be among the trending hashtags of “justicefor”? Why not the cases of sexual abuse come up as they occur? If 10-11 cases (among children and adults) occur every day why aren’t they reported as such?
Well the answer to this tragic question lies in the fact that honour in our country is attached to the women of the society. They are held guilty for being raped. They are told to stay silent in order to protect the remaining honour of their family.
In an interview with a student for her thesis purpose, Khubaib Kiyani, a very famous psychologist expressed his grief over the fact that people do not show up for psychological counselling after they have been through the trauma of being raped or sexually harassed. They take it upon themselves to heal from the damage, just to keep the incident secret. Letting more people know will somehow make them guilty in the society.
Another reason behind people hesitating to report such incidents is the maladministration of our law enforcement agencies. Victims and their families are reluctant to contact police, because of how police is pictured in the country.
How many more girls will have to die, in order to bring about the justice, that is all over in the form of hashtags on all social media platforms? How many more victims will have to sleep forever in order to wake up the society?
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