Vani: Pakistan's 'Sati' equivalent
What is Vani?
'Vani' is a child marriage custom in tribal areas of Pakistan. Besides tribal areas, it is widely followed in Punjab in Pakistan. This custom is tied to blood feuds among the different tribes and clans where the young girls are forcibly married to the members of different clans in order to resolve the feuds. The Vani could be avoided if the clan of the girl agrees to pay money, called 'Deet'. Otherwise the young bride may spend her life paying for the crime of her male relatives.
The custom is illegal in Pakistan but still practiced in some areas. Recently the courts in Pakistan have begun taking serious note and action against the continuation of the practice.
PAKISTAN: Focus on ‘vani’ – the practice of giving away young women to settle feuds
MIANWALI, 16 March 2006 (IRIN) - Each day, Fareedullah Khan, nearly 70, reads items from the newspaper to his wife, Sakina Bibi, 60. The items he picks out from the columns of dense, Urdu-language print concern the custom of 'vani', or the giving away of girls in forced marriage to the male relatives of murder victims.
The traditional Pakistani practice is used as compensation for the crime and a means to settle feuds between two families or clans. The elderly couple has a reason to be interested. Nearly 20 years ago, their granddaughter became a 'vani' - to pay for a murder committed by her paternal uncle. She has since lived a life of misery, as a virtual slave within the home of a husband 30 years her senior.
ORIGINS
Today, her grandparents hope the brutal tribal custom can be ended. "It is a terrible thing. The girls handed over to rival families are innocent of crime, and they are always treated like enemies within the homes of their spouses," Fareedullah told IRIN. His wife nodded sadly, contemplating the fate of their favourite grandchild. Both fervently support a new campaign against the practice.
On 7 March, in Mianwali, a town of some 85,000 people in north-western Punjab, located 200 km south of the capital Islamabad, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) organised a meeting to coincide with International Women's Day to speak out against 'vani'.
SPEAKING OUT
"Such customs thrive in oppressive environments," HRCP chairperson and human rights activist Asma Jahangir said during her speech. Many women at the meeting said they wanted to get the practice of ‘vani’ banned.
Women appear to be less tolerant of such practices today and are increasingly prepared to speak out against them.
THREE SISTERS
Late in 2005, in an incident that galvanised public opinion against 'vani', three sisters in the village of Sultanwala, in Mianwali district, took a bold stand against the practice, warning they would commit collective suicide if wed forcibly to men from a rival family.
The sisters, Abda, Amna and Sajda Khan, all still in their teens, and all well educated, were put forward for 'vani' 14 years ago, when they were still toddlers. Their uncle, Mohammad Iqbal Khan, had at the time killed his cousin and then gone into hiding to escape a death sentence.
A tribal council called to resolve the issue offered him a pardon – in exchange for five women from his family being handed over as 'vani' when they came of age to male members of the victim’s family. The women, then mere children, included Iqbal's own daughter, and his nieces, Abda, Amna and Sajda.
"I agreed only out of fear. If I had not done so, I would have been killed by now," says Iqbal, pointing out that his cousins live just across the road from his own house.
The practice has plenty of support in the region, where it is viewed as a way to prevent blood feuds that can continue for generations and claim dozens of lives.
But the Khan sisters are lucky – they have been supported by their father, Jehan Khan Niazi, who is determined his daughters will not pay for the crimes of others. He has moved the young women away from the village to protect them, and says: "I agreed to the custom at gun-point. But my daughters are innocent, and have their rights. They are educated, and this makes them able to stand up for justice."
COURT JUDGEMENT
In a landmark judgment in December 2005, the Supreme Court of Pakistan, hearing several petitions against 'vani', ordered police in the Punjab and neighbouring North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to protect women given in marriage under the custom, which had already been declared illegal two years ago.
The court made specific reference to the need to protect potential 'vani' victims in Mianwali district, including the Khan sisters.
But old traditions cannot just be legislated against and left at that, Jahangir argues. The family to whom the five girls in Mianwali were to be handed over, continue to demand the pledge be honoured, and insist the girls are in fact already the wives of male members of their clan.
Ziaullah Khan, a Mianwali-based activist for the Karwan Community Development Association, an NGO, says that since the Sultanwala case: "At least 20 to 30 other persons have come forward to report 'vani'."
She added that despite the ban on the practice, both by courts and the Punjab government, cases of girls being given away in compensation still take place. Most incidents have been reported in the Mianwali district, with some reports in the media stating there have been at least a dozen cases within the last year.
[Excerpted from Wikipedia and the IRIN news agency]
