Dreams of Waking

Helpless and fragile, she lay under a banyan tree at the outskirts of her village. Her screams of agony echoed all around the quiet maidaan (ground). But there was no one to listen. Her baby girl was almost there…

 “You have brought shame to this family yet again,” roared her husband when she woke up the next morning.

“I want to see my daughter,” she feebly replied.

“There is nothing to see. I took care of it,” he calmly said.

 Suddenly realizing what he meant, she screamed, “You wretched man! What did you do to her?”

“Burned her,” he answered.

This was the the alarming and immensely tragic story of Sakina, living in a rural area of Sindh with her abusive husband and nagging mother-in-law who keep Sakina under constant pressure to give birth to a boy and not a girl. The murder of her daughter is one amongst thousands of other cases of similar nature, taking place in Pakistan at an increasing rate.

The issue of infanticide- killing of infants- is a neglected matter which needs to be bought into the limelight so that necessary action is taken against it. According to the Edhi Foundation, the extent of infanticide in Pakistan has grown by over a 100 percent in the last decade.

The victims of this social evil are mostly girls as they are typically taken to be an economic burden by many families and a major proportion of the population adheres to the notion that the birth of a girl takes away the “izzat” (respect) of the family, whereas a boy brings pride to it. These infants are slain to death, hanged, burned, brutally dumped in garbage dumps where sometimes their tiny corpses are mutilated by street animals. All these sickening to get rid of the baby are because of illegitimacy (born out of wedlock) and sometimes because the parents do not have the financial ability to raise the child. Rape and minimum possibility to get an abortion because it is illegal are also one of the most common causes of infanticide.

It is a shame to see how tolerant and oblivious we have become as a society of such cruelty and inhumanity. One would think that being an Islamic Republic, the religious authorities would be working to eliminate such disrespect of women as Islam believes in celebrating the birth of a female. However, we are instead faced with a situation where around 1200 bodies of slain infants have been found in one year alone, with most cases going unreported and those which are reported do not reach till an investigation because of callous attitudes of the police towards the issue of infanticide.

The head of Edhi Foundation, 83-year-old Abdul Sattar Edhi, says the blame is to be directed towards, “Pakistan's crippling poverty and a government that, for decades, has failed to educate the masses, generate jobs and provide citizens with the most basic needs. The distribution of resources by the government is wrong. Many people don't pay taxes; there's no charity, and what you get from the government is all based on your wealth."

It is clear that the decades of global struggle for emancipation and empowerment has had a minimum effect on Pakistan as the nation continues to face this crime against humanity which rules out any possibility of the existence of the freedom and right to live.