HELP ASSIYA RAFIQ

Quoting Nicholas Kristof's Column in July 27th of Aug Herald Tribune and following up info on Newyorktimes.com/ontheground. Help Assiya show the way.

Op-Ed Columnist

Not a Victim, but a Hero

After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over.

Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her.

The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. That’s the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.

Instead, Assiya summoned the unimaginable courage to go public and fight back. She is seeking to prosecute both her kidnappers and the police, despite threats against her and her younger sisters. This is a kid who left me awed and biting my lip; this isn’t a tale of victimization but of valor, empowerment and uncommon heroism.

“I decided to prosecute because I don’t want the same thing to happen to anybody else,” she said firmly.

Assiya’s case offers a window into the quotidian corruption and injustice endured by impoverished Pakistanis — leading some to turn to militant Islam.

“When I treat a rape victim, I always advise her not to go to the police,” said Dr. Shershah Syed, the president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Pakistan. “Because if she does, the police might just rape her again.”

Yet Assiya is also a sign that change is coming. She says she was inspired by Mukhtar Mai, a young woman from this remote village of Meerwala who was gang raped in 2002 on the orders of a village council. Mukhtar prosecuted her attackers and used the compensation money to start a school.

Mukhtar is my hero. Many Times readers who followed her story in past columns of mine have sent her donations through a fund at Mercy Corps, at www.mercycorps.org, and Mukhtar has used the money to open schools, a legal aid program, an ambulance service, a women’s shelter, a telephone hotline — and to help Assiya fight her legal case.

The United States has stood aloof from the ubiquitous injustices in Pakistan, and that’s one reason for cynicism about America here. I’m hoping the Obama administration will make clear that Americans stand shoulder to shoulder with heroines like Mukhtar and Assiya, and with an emerging civil society struggling for law and social justice.

Assiya’s saga began a year ago when a woman who was a family friend sold her to two criminals who had family ties to prominent politicians. Assiya said the two men spent the next year beating and raping her.

The men were implicated in a gold robbery, so they negotiated a deal with the police in the town of Kabirwala, near Khanewal: They handed over Assiya, along with a $625 bribe, in exchange for the police pinning the robbery on the girl.

By Assiya’s account, which I found completely credible, four police officers, including a police chief, took turns beating and raping her — sometimes while she was tied up — over the next two weeks. A female constable obligingly stepped out whenever the men wanted access to Assiya.

Assiya’s family members heard that she was in the police station, and a court granted their petition for her release and sent a bailiff to get her out. The police hid Assiya, she said, and briefly locked up her 10-year-old brother to bully the family into backing off.

The bailiff accepted bribes from both the family and the police, but in the end he freed the girl. Assiya, driven by fury that overcame her shame, told her full story to the magistrate, who ordered a medical exam and an investigation. The medical report confirms that Assiya’s hymen had been broken and that she had abrasions all over her body.

The morning I met Assiya, she said she had just received the latest in a series of threats from the police: Unless she withdraws her charges, they will arrest, rape or kill her — and her two beloved younger sisters.

The family is in hiding. It has lost its livelihood and accumulated $2,500 in debts. Assiya’s two sisters and three brothers have had to drop out of school, and they will find it harder to marry because Assiya is considered “dishonored.” Most of her relatives tell Assiya that she must give in. But she tosses her head and insists that she will prosecute her attackers to spare other girls what she endured.

(For readers who want to help, more information is available on my blog at: www.nytimes.com/ontheground.)

Assiya’s mother, Iqbal Mai, told me that in her despair, she at first had prayed that God should never give daughters to poor families. “But then I changed my mind,” she added, with a hint of pride challenging her fears. “God should give poor people daughters like Assiya who will fight.”

Amen.

TO HELP :

Helping Assiya and Mukhtar

By Nicholas Kristof

My Sunday column looks at Assiya Rafiq, a teenage girl in Pakistan who is challenging tradition by trying to prosecute the criminals and the police who raped her. She is just an amazing, courageous young woman, for it takes unimaginable bravery in rural Pakistan to acknowledge having been raped. When this came out, her brothers came home crying because she had been called a whore.

Assiya is being helped by Mukhtar Mai, whom I’ve written many columns about (along with a few videos). In the older columns, she used a variant of her name, Mukhtaran Bibi, but she’s the same person. Mukhtar is also a star in the forthcoming book, Half the Sky, that my wife and I have written. Mukhtar is giving legal counsel and other assistance to Assiya, and helping keep her alive. But Mukhtar is herself in danger, and many people in the feudal class would like to kill her; even with an armed bodyguard, Mukhtar doesn’t dare go more than 100 feet from her compound. I’ve told Mukhar to set up a steel gate to make it harder for gunmen to get to her.

So one way to help Assiya is through Mukhtar: funds can be sent through Mercy Corps. On the Mercy Corps home page, by the time you read this there should be something about giving to Mukhtar. Then, depending on your stipulation, those funds can go just for Assiya or for the other projects that Mukhtar is working on. (Given that Assiya has no bank account and is in hiding, there’s no way of getting money directly to her.) (UPDATE: Mercy Corps advises that to stipulate that the money should go to Assiya, go ahead and donate it to the Mukhtar Mai fund and then, in the comment field at checkout, say that it is for Assiya.)

The other thing one can do is call on Pakistani leaders to protect both Mukhtar and Assiya. Here are a couple of people you can write (if faxing from the U.S., replace the “+” with “011″):
—President Asif Ali Zardari, President’s Avenue, Islamabad, Pakistan, fax: +92-51-920-3297;
—Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani, Prime Minister House, Islamabad, Pakistan, fax: +92-51-922-1596;
—Mr. Mumtaz Gillani, Federal Minister for Human Rights, fax: +92-51-924-4542. (UPDATE: an email address I had for Mr. Gillani here apparently doesn’t work.)

Let me add one thing: Pakistanis are sometimes sensitive when I write about the country’s underside, and I can understand that. But women like Assiya and Rafiq reflect the best of their country, not the worst, and all Pakistanis should be so proud of them. One Pakistani government after another — and, sadly, one American government after another — has done little for ordinary Pakistanis. If improvement is going to come, it’ll be because of the emerging civil society, because of change bubbling up, not dribbling down. In a word, it’ll come because of courageous game-changers like Mukhtar and Assiya and others like them.

I’ll let you know how the case proceeds.

THE SEA

THE SEA

I DID NOT KNOW YOU
BEFORE YESTERDAY

BUT I SEE LIKE YOU SEE
YOU HATE WHAT'S TO SEE

SO WE TOOK THE SEA

MY STREETS ARE ENRAGED
BY THE FIRES OF CHANGE

YOUR STREETS ARE ESTRANGED
BY VIOLENT EXCHANGE

SO WE TOOK THE SEA

MY MESSAGE IN TECHNOLOGY
IS POWER TO BE FREE

YOUR MESSAGE IS EVERYBODY
FREEDOM FIGHTIN' BABY

SO WE TOOK THE SEA

MY PERSIAN CHILDHOOD
IN TEHRAN NEIGHBORHOOD

YOUR PERSIAN MANHOOD
NO IRAN UNDER A HOOD

SO WE TOOK IT TO SEA

AND THE WAVES COME AND GO
WITH OUR BLOOD , COLOUR RED

YET THE WAVES COME AND GO
STORMS GROW AND GROW

Me, my thoughts and the revolution.

Following the events in Iran have been a fantastic six day long saga I have been passionate about since Khamenei, our all powered white bearded spiritual leader, declared the controversial results of the elections only three hours after the voting ended. As a Persian-Swedish Musician , I was brought up by my Persian grandfather Aziz in a French boarding school leaving behind my parents and a beloved international elementary school in the south of Spain . I had weekend allowances, and on each Sunday my Granfather had epic Persian luncheon invitationals in our chic Paris flat. These Sunday lunches reunited a large range of important ( and less important ) Persian characters that had a couple of things in common : leaving Iran with the 79' revolution, fighting extra hard over backgammon, neverending superloud debates after shooting up my grandpa Aziz's traditional Sunday cold roast and , above all, an unconditional love for the past. Listening to them in utter silence , eating my roast away, I grasped the essence of these reunions : the world had stopped turning down in 79', and they all played at a vicious " let's press rewind" game. It went on for years, and some stories I heard over and over, and how to say, it still goes on now, same stories , same roast, same guys. Difference is, I do not have the obligation to attend since I dropped out of Architecture school ( thus not following Aziz's steps, him being a once famous Persian Architect ) . In other words I did not turn into a Princeton bred bourgeois-chic passeist Persian apparatchik. Nopes. I went for Rock & Roll, and in my sense, for an exciting personal experience of the world I was thrown in. It has to do with a passionate love of the future , of what it can hold, and in lots of ways , with a sane rebellion against the weight of a family fueled classical education. My favourite book at that time had been Sumerset Maughm's "The Razor's Edge" . I was mesmerized by its main character, Larry, that had chosen experience against a comfortable pre-written life. I had the hardest time of my life trying to get away from my Grandpa's clutches, as he used 1001 stratagems to get me back in line. But as my band got stronger and my entourage steadier I naturally escaped his rule. My idea of Iran was still to be made and I did not want to be estranged by thoughts of another time. Being in a band, writing songs, and playing them to people of my age or younger ( or older ! ) is an everyday thrill to me. I sense it somewhat magically links me to my generation. Like an invisible bond. I came to think, that in time things would change. Not only in Iran, but on a larger scale. Our generation has finally little in common with the baby boomer's generation ( my dad's) and even less with the Second World war's generation ( my grandad's). I often say we were born with coca cola in our hands or with a Mac at the end of our fingers. We have integrated the idea of marketing as something very very natural, and we have created a multitask psychology and an extremely ecclectic culture. The word global is second nature and in no way linked to politics, but to freedom. Freedom being the never-ending possibilities of planetary positive experience. That's what I profoundly felt when the first images came in from Iran last Friday. Man, I could have been any of these guys down there. It felt deep down like that their pledge for freedom was not only directed to the Ayatollah, but to the rest of the world. If you look at it closely, you could understand the events differently, from another angle. Their struggle symbolizes the one of a generation. From Asia to Africa, from Europe to America, Obama opened a door that was waiting to be unlocked. And now, here it is , a country's entire youth trying to liberate itself from the weight of the past , make the break . They are us, we are them.

Artists flourish whenever and however they flourish, sometimes repeatedly and often not at all. The trajectory of each artistic career is complex, unpredictable blend of individual nature and societal nurture There are no patterns and no templates. Each artist's story is one of a kind and, ultimately, irrelevant. The most sensible artists, like the best generals, are focussed on, and fighting, the next battle, their own.