Editorial
Pakistan is bleeding from a wound it refuses to name. Rape is not a rare aberration in this country; it is a recurring failure, repeated in villages and in the drawing rooms of the powerful, in katchi abadis and in gated colonies alike. Women are not safe. Children are not safe. And no class, no status, no address offers true protection from this violence. This is the uncomfortable truth that Pakistan must finally face.
We speak often of honour in this country, yet honour has become a shield for silence rather than a demand for justice. A daughter assaulted becomes a family’s shame to hide, not a crime to prosecute. A child violated becomes a secret buried under fear of scandal. This inversion of morality, where the victim carries the stigma and the perpetrator walks free, is itself a form of societal complicity. Silence protects no one but the guilty.
The law exists on paper. Implementation does not exist in practice. Investigations move slowly, when they move at all. Evidence is mishandled. Survivors are interrogated as though they are the accused. Courts delay for years, and delay is its own injustice, for justice postponed is justice denied. Meanwhile the powerful use influence to escape accountability, and the poor lack the means to pursue it. This is not a gap in the system; this is the system.
Reform must be comprehensive, not cosmetic. Police must be trained to treat survivors with dignity, not suspicion. Forensic capacity must be built, not merely promised. Special courts must function with speed and integrity. Cultural attitudes must shift, so that shame attaches to the crime and not to the victim. And every citizen, from the union council to the federal cabinet, must accept that protecting the vulnerable is not charity; it is the fundamental obligation of the state.
Pakistan cannot claim civilization while its women and children live in fear. Dignity, safety, and justice are not privileges for the few. They are rights owed to every single soul within these borders.
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