Pakistan: 14-Year-Old Shot Five Times, Survived

*updated - scroll down*

The monsters pretended to kill her after having declared her a "kari".

Karo kari is a tribal custom followed in Punjab and rural Sindh in Pakistan of honor killing of men and women who are accused of dishonoring their families.

KARACHI: Fourteen-year-old Noor Jehan has no regal airs despite her name, but for anyone who listens to her story, it will immediately become clear that she has risen like a phoenix from the flames after being shot five times and left for dead in a ditch near Baqai hospital.

The Gadap police had Noor Jehan admitted to Ward No. 26 at Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre on Monday after she underwent initial treatment for her gunshot wounds at Baqai hospital. She was shot in the arm, both legs and the stomach as a result of which her limbs were fractured and part of her intestine had to be removed. Amazingly, however, she was alert and lucid and extremely particular about the details of her experience with death.

Noor Jehan claims that she was shot point blank by her revolver-wielding paternal cousins - Khadim and Sajjan - both in their mid-thirties or forties. She said that they had brought her to a jungle in the New Karachi area where they wanted to finish her off. Once shot, she fell into a ditch they were standing near and the men checked if she was dead. “We’ve shot her five times, she should be dead,” she reported them as saying. “They thought I was dead.” Then, they sped away in their Datsun. Noor Jehan dragged herself out of the ditch and all the way to the road where a nearby chowkidar called the police and helped her. “We know she dragged herself because there was a trail of blood all the way back,” said Gadap constable Naseer Ahmed, who accompanied Noor Jehan to JPMC with a female razakar as part of police protection. No female police officer accompanied her.

According to Noor Jehan, Khadim and Sajjan tried to kill her after declaring her a kari. “We’ve killed the karo, so what makes you think we will spare you,” she recalls them as saying to her.

The case developed in Ratodero where Noor Jehan lived with her father Jamal, mother Sharifa, 10-year-old sister Shahida and three brothers Irfan, 4, Imran, three and Amer, one. Noor Jehan said that she helped her father who worked on the lands of a zamindar named Ghulam Brohi. Brohi used to visit their house a lot, which apparently her cousins Khadim and Sajjan objected to two months ago.

“They killed Ghulam Brohi and my father presented them a Quran following which we fled the village,” Noor Jehan claimed. On April 18, the family fled to a Ramzan Brohi who ran a cattle pen in New Karachi where they stayed for three days. According to Noor Jehan, Khadim and Sajjan, who she says are common dacoits, found them and separated the family. They blindfolded her and took her away to a deserted place and now she does not know where her family is.

According to Noor Jehan, she knew since childhood what karo kari is. “When I became slightly aware of the world around me I found out that my aunt and cousin had been killed in karo kari also,” she said.

Cold-blooded criminals!!!

I can´t even think of a suitable punishment for bastards like these.

Background:

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – Honour crimes are an archaic practice in Pakistan. Although precise figures are hard to obtain, especially for the more remote rural and tribal areas, Pakistan is thought to hold the world record in honour crimes.

Karo kari is a compound word literally meaning “black male” and “black female,” metaphoric terms for adulterer and adulteress. Being so labelled leads more often than not to the murder of both man and woman allegedly guilty of having an illicit affair. This is especially true in the rural areas of the southern province of Sindh. In other parts of the country, women are more likely to be accused of sexual improprieties and murdered in order to wash the sullied family honour.

Official data recently published by the Pakistani Senate show that more than 4,000 people died in the last 6 years as result of karo-kari. Of the victims almost 2,800 were women and just over 1,300 were men. Thus twice as many women as men lose their lives to this most barbaric social custom.

Multiculturalism is often impossible. Karo kari is one reason why.

Update:
Pakistan: 14-Year-Old Noor Jehan Dies Alone In The Hospital

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