After booking my flight to Pakistan for visiting my family, I got to know from some very kind friends that the Canadian government is changing its COVID test approval policies for India and Pakistan and that tests from Pakistan will not be accepted, and I will not be able to come back to Canada without test from a third country. To check the regulations, I headed over to Government Canada's travel to Pakistan Advisory section.
The situation about tests not being accepted turned out to be only for India, but what I found nonetheless horrified me. I grew up in Pakistan, but reading about safety of women on the Government Canada website scared even me. Here's what they said:
Women's Safety
Women travelling alone may be subject to some forms of harassment and verbal abuse. Gender-based violence is common in Pakistan. Honour killings and forced marriages are frequently reported. Safe-travel guide for women
Forced marriages
Forced marriage affecting foreigners occurs. It sometimes occurs without the affected person's prior knowledge or consent.
And I wondered why the Canadian government thinks that women are not safe in Pakistan?
The next day, on the 14th of August, the Minar-e-Pakistan incident happened where a tiktoker was harassed, attacked, humiliated, assaulted, and stripped by a mob of 400 people. Suddenly I was reminded of Noor Mukadam, Quratulain, and many more. A piece of newspaper was making rounds on Twitter that listed 6 rape cases in a day, one of them being a 15-year-old girl. Two days later, another video of a girl in a chingchi rikshaw being harrassed went viral. Canada's stance suddenly doesn't seem so far fetched.
Around the same time, #PakistanIsNotSafeforWomen, as well as #PakistanIsSafeForEveryone, was trending on Twitter. There were very loud slogans about other countries having "higher" rape rates than Pakistan. Yes, rapes happen everywhere globally, but the 24/7 harassment towards every woman on the streets doesn't.
One of my university fellows came to Canada for Ph.D. ten days ago, and it was her first time out of Pakistan. Her words,
"I can randomly walk the streets and take an unfamiliar route to get back to my building here. In Pakistan, I could not even imagine walking alone taking a random unfamiliar route home."
The streets of Pakistan have never been safe for women
Ask any woman around you, and they can list multiple incidents where they were stared at, made uncomfortable, harassed, and groped in public places. This includes parks, bus stops, and public transit. In my own case, it was the roof of my house when I was 10, a public van the day of my NUST entry test, and multiple times in Daewoo when I was coming home from NUST.
Shame somehow is always associated with the victim. Even at the time of writing this, I'm thinking of posting this somewhere anonymously. The fear of my family asking me not to say out loud in public that I was harassed is very REAL. But someone needs to speak up without being anonymous because people around us think their friends and family are "safe" that women in their own family won't be harassed. I want people to get out of their bubble and realize that every woman around them has face harassment at some point in her life. She just hides it from you.
My parents were with me in that van when a man was molesting me from the seat behind me. My mother saw that. She gave me the gesture of a finger to her lips. She whispered,
"Don't react, dad will see and here in the middle of the road, people will start fighting. Only you will be the one with a real loss by missing your entry test".
So I shushed
and let the person keep molesting me the rest of the way, turning inch by inch towards my mother's seat to create one more inch of a distance from his hands.
I want to scream everytime I'm reminded of that image.
Everytime I open my Twitter, or News, or Facebook...
My message
to everyone is to "talk" to the woman around you without making them afraid of victim-blaming, judgement, and shame. As long as we keep women afraid to talk, afraid of embarrassment, and keep shushing them, these monsters will always be free. Instead, teach your girls to publicly call out these monsters. Because, let me tell you unless it's like the Lahore incident where the general public was completely shameless and was busy filming the attack, someone around you WILL speak up. I learnt that in a Daewoo on the way home when the men in the seat behind me tried to molest me. This time I was alone. I had no one to shush me; I was not afraid of my family knowing anything. At the time, I was alone, and yet I was strong. I stood up, turned to them, and said aloud,
"Bhai apne hath apni seat ki had tak rakhen". (Translation: Brother, keep your hands to yourself)
Their cowardly faces turned red, and their constant bickering stopped immediately. The rest of the journey home was comfortable.