I was sentenced to be gang-raped in public because my brother had an

SHE is tiny and frail with the haunted look of a frightened child. Yet Mukhtar Mai is defiant."What happened to me can't be allowed to happen again to any other woman," she says softly. "I had thought of committing suicide. I thought my life was over. Now I realise I have a purpose, to change things for good."

Mukhtar, 30, still weeps bitterly at the memory of how she was gang-raped by four men just a fortnight ago.

It was a vicious crime by any standards - but in Mukhtar's case more horrifying still as it was carried out as a form of "justice" in Pakistan. Her rape was a bizarre punishment for her family because her 14-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor was accused of having an "improper relationship" with a woman belonging to a higher-caste.

And as Mukhtar endured her vicious ordeal more than 250 of her fellow villagers gathered outside the room where she was held and laughed and jeered at her screams for help.

Ironically, there was no proof Mukhtar's brother had sex with the woman - he'd simply been seen walking with without a chaperone.

But her family's dignity had beeninsulted - and in the male- dominated village culture of the rural Punjab a woman had to pay. First the elders of the other caste dealt with the boy, kidnapping, beating and sodomising him. The police freed the boy, but didn't arrest anyone.

Then the elders called a local "jirga" - a court made up of villagers. This rough form of justice isn't recognised in Pakistani law, but still wields power in the Punjab and Mukhtar's village of Meerwala. First they summoned Mukhtar's father Ghulam Farid. Although hepleaded for mercy they demanded Mukhtar be brought before them. "I begged them, my daughter is a very pious girl," he said. It was to no avail.

The jury was waiting, sitting cross-legged on the ground in a farmyard while the frightened Mukhtar was paraded in front of them. Some were armed with guns and swords.

"I had no idea what they were going to do to me," she says. At first I thought they would just ask for an apology, for what they said my brother had done.

"They're more powerful than us. My family is weak - we were frightened." Mukhtar's father has already paid a fine of pounds 120 - equivalent to three months' income for the family - to his son's accusers. But that wasn't enough.

The jury was gathered to pass a sentence on Mukhtar herself - among them Abdul Khaliq, a neighbour she had grown up with.

She started to plead with him. "I begged him for mercy. "I said, 'I am like your sister. Don't do this to me'. But he never said a thing to me. I knew then, what they were planning to do."

Abdul was one of the men who raped her. It didn't matter, that this was a woman he had known as a child.

It didn't concern the "jury," either, that Mukhtar was well known to them and, as the equivalent of a Sunday School teacher, had helped their children to learn to read the Koran.

As her father and uncle watched helplessly she was dragged into a hut to receive her punishment.

"I begged my father for help, but there was nothing he could do," Mukhtar says. "Nobody could help me, against so many with people with guns who were just watching.

"They took me inside a room that was used for storage and smelled of old sacks and damp. It was dark, but there was some moonlight. I could see there were men already inside, waiting.

"They said, 'If you cry out, we will kill you'. But even so I begged them to stop, and screamed and shouted for help.

"I know the people outside could hear me, because I could hear them laughing. I was kicked and punched, many times.

"They forced me onto the floor, tore off my shirt and ripped away my trousers. One of them put a gun on my head while the others tore up my clothes.

"Then they held me down and took it in turns to rape me. I screamed and screamed, but they would not stop. It went on and on. They didn't stop for an hour." When she was finally set free, Mukhtar stumbled naked from the hut in front of the hundreds of onlookers.

Her father covered her with a shawl, and helped her to walk home.

He was crying too," Mukhtar says. "My poor father, tears were streaming down his face. I'm not the only one who has suffered."

Until the horrific events Mukhtar had lived a simple life in the tiny village. As low-caste gujjars, the family - her parents, three younger sisters and her brother - own just a tiny parcel of land, a ramshackle house which isn't much more than one room, a few stunted mango trees, and two cows.

There is no electricity, a foul-smelling ditch runs yards from their home, and in summer there is no respite from the suffocating heat.

A year ago, after three years of marriage, Mukhtar was betrayed and abandoned by her husband.

It was since then she had taken on her teaching role with her family's support. For days after her ordeal, they were all too frightened to complain to the police.

But finally, Mukhtar herself decided to do the unthinkable - to stand up for a woman's right to justice in rural Pakistan.

"I want to see them punished - not just the ones who did it, but those who looked on and allowed it to happen," she says. "I hate them for what they did."

In the past, women have been murdered simply for reporting crimes to the police. But the case of Mukhtar is turning into a national scandal.

A police officer has been arrested for failing to intervene in the case.

The law minister Khalid Ranjha called it an act of terrorism, and Pakistan's minister for women Attiya Inayatullah made the 10-hour drive to the village last week, to show her support. She handed over pounds 6,000 compensation which Mukhtar has pledged to spend on a school for village children.

Eight men who acted as the "tribal jury" and one of the suspected rapists have been arrested. The other three have fled in fear for their lives.

Once any trial is over, it's likely the Pakistan Government will be forced into a major inquiry into "honour" crimes against women.

According to human rights investigators, 227 were killed last year in the Punjab region alone.

Eighty were killed by their brothers, 50 by husbands, 19 by fathers and the rest by various relatives and in-laws. Only 22 arrests were made.

Groups such as Amnesty have compiled a dossier of murderous attacks on Pakistani women, for "crimes" that might have been nothing more than daring to speak to men who weren't relatives.

In one case still under investigation, a schoolteacher killed his wife simply because he dreamt one night that she was having an affair.

And murder is only the more extreme way of maintaining honour.

According to one estimate over 90 per cent of Pakistani women are victims of domestic violence.

In Britain, honour killings are rare - there have been two in the last 10 years, in Asian communities.

But Hanana Siddiqui, spokesman for the Southall Black Sisters, which campaigns for Asian women's rights, said, "The more routine situation here is that Asian women are constrained from leaving an abusive marriage.

"We get 2,000 calls a year, mostly about cases of domestic abuse."

As Mukhtar Mai says, speaking quietly to officers in a Punjabi police station, hers is a case that must be heard - and not just for her own sake.

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Additional reporting by Dennis Ellam

Killed for failing to do the ironing

SOME of the other awful crimes that have come to light include:

October 2001: Sheikhupura district. Sharif tied up his wife Shukria and set her alight because she had remained childless after 10 years of marriage. She died later in hospital.

July 2001: Subur district. Shoukat Labano, 16, shot and killed his 33-year-old mother because he suspected her of having an affair.

June 2001: Thatta district. Brothers Hanif Jatoi and Noor Mohammad Jatoi murdered Mohammad Juman Jatoi because they were annoyed about his dog barking.

March 2001: Sukkur district. Widow Hidayat Khatoon, 60, and Baksh Ali, 55, were killed by Hidayat's son. When he gave himself up to police he said he had been teased by villagers over his mother's alleged affair and had therefore killed her and the man he thought was her lover.

October 2000: Rajanpur district. Nathu suspected his pregnant wife Gamil of infidelity. He stabbed her to death, then pulled out the foetus and stabbed it as well.

May 2000: Gujranwala district. Robina and Khushi Mohammad were hunted down and killed by Robina's uncle and two brothers because they had married against her family's wishes.

May 2000: Khairpur district. Haneef Jat beheaded his wife Sughran after she was late serving his meal.

May 2000: Daska. A man shot and killed his sister because she refused to iron his clothes.

March 2000: Larkana. Rahima Mugheri, 14, was killed by her husband Niazul Mugheri, 28, on their wedding night because she confessed to pre-marital sex.

April 1999: Lahore. Samia Sarwar, 29, was shot dead by her mother's driver after fleeing to a women's shelter following years of domestic violence.

March 1999: North West Frontier Province. Mentally retarded Lal Jamilla Mandokhel, 16, was reportedly raped repeatedly by a local government official. Police handed the girl over to her tribe, the Mazuzai. A tribal "court" decided she had brought shame on the tribe, and honour could only be restored by her death. She was shot dead at a public gathering.

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