A woman who was gang-raped on the orders of village elders has managed to make her case a test of Pakistan's international reputation, writes Declan Walsh
On first sight Mukhtaran Bibi is an unremarkable woman. Her frail figure hunched in a chair, she speaks in a low voice and has a habit of tugging a veil across her face.
Her home, the remote Punjabi village of Meerwala, is notable only for its rich soil, fine cotton and scorching temperatures, which this week touched 50 degrees.
In fact, the 31-year-old is one of Pakistan's most extraordinary people: a rape victim turned victor; an international human rights heroine; and, since last week, the Punjabi peasant who took on the president - and won.
Mukhtaran's story of steely courage first became public three years ago. Last Thursday she was due to fly to a human rights conference in the US to tell it again - how, on a muggy summer night, four neighbours raped her on the order of a council of village elders. How she battled stinging social prejudice, biased laws and her own fear to confront them in court. And how, after a tear-drenched testimony, she saw the men sentenced to death - no mean feat in a country where Islamic laws require a rape victim to produce four witnesses to prove her case.
But Mukhtaran never made it on to last Thursday's flight.
Before she could even pack her bags the Pakistani government did everything in its power to stop her. She was placed on the "exit control list" - a notorious list of people forbidden to leave the country, usually reserved for criminals and political opponents.
Officials confiscated her passport. And just in case she might make a break for Karachi Airport - where, in any event, immigration officials had already been tipped off - they surrounded her Meerwala home with police.
"The government is saying that I am being guarded, but to me it seems as if I am under house arrest. There are police all around my home," she said helplessly by phone.
News of the outrage rippled across the world. Local and international newspapers ran front-page stories. Human rights groups started petitions. Hundreds of internet blog sites sprang up.
The scandal reached the White House. Usually, Bush administration officials turn a blind eye to abuses by Islamabad, a key ally in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda cohorts. This time they picked up the phone. After a call from secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, the Pakistani government changed its mind.
Mukhtaran was allowed to travel to the States. After defeating the men who had raped her, the plucky woman had scored a second victory over those who had tried to shut her up.
Announcing the U-turn, the sheepish foreign minister tried to convince reporters there had been one big misunderstanding. "There was no foreign influence on our decision," he said unconvincingly.
Mukhtaran's nightmare began on a stiflingly hot evening in June 2002. It started with a row between neighbours. The Mastoi, a family who lived on the other side of a cotton field, accused her 12-year-old brother, Shakoor, of having a sexual affair with one of their women. (A government inquiry later exposed the story as hogwash.) Because they came from a higher social caste, the Mastoi marched Shakoor to jail. Then they convened a "panchayat", or village court, to settle the affair.
There would be little justice. With hundreds of villagers watching, Mukhtaran attended the court to plead her brother's innocence and seek a solution. Moments later, she became the solution. The elders declared that, in retribution for Shakoor's alleged crime, Mukhtaran should be gang raped. In front of the crowd four men grabbed her by the hand, dragged her across a cotton field and shoved her into a mud-walled room.
When we spoke earlier this year, she still had difficulty recounting what happened next.
"I am sorry, I have told this story too often," she said, one hand half-covering her face. "It disturbs my sleep. I cannot go back there."
Meanwhile, her father and brother, forced to stand at the gate, waited outside. When she emerged weeping afterwards, they quietly threw a shawl over her torn clothes and shouldered her home. They did not have far to go.
The incident could have easily vanished into obscurity. Suicide is a common strategy among rape victims under pressure to safeguard the family "honour". Just two days earlier another woman in the locality had killed herself.
"She swallowed a bottle of pesticide," Mukhtaran explained. "In this area, there is no law and no justice. A woman is left with one option, and that is to die."
But support came from unexpected quarters. A local imam denounced the attack at Friday prayers and the case reached the Urdu-language papers. Then it fanned out into the international media. What made the headlines was not the rape but Mukhtaran's reaction.
The Mastoi men reckoned on Mukhtaran's silence to get away with their bestial punishment. But they reckoned wrong.
After two months Mukhtaran testified against her attackers in open court, fighting back her emotions. As a captivated nation watched, a judge found the men guilty. Six Mastoi men - four rapists and two village elders - were sentenced to die by hanging.
It was a victory, of sorts. Human rights groups feted the woman with the heart of a lion. President Pervez Musharraf sent a €6,500 donation, 24-hour police protection, and the offer of a house in Islamabad. Mukhtaran used the money to build Meerwala's first two schools. Even her local council paid tribute, tarring the bone-jarring track to her remote farmhouse.
"She became a symbol of courage for us," said Dr Farzana Bari, director of gender studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.
Of course it would take more than one woman to turn back the tide of sexual violence. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) recently reported 670 rapes for the first 10 months of 2004 - a fraction of the total. The HRCP estimates that 80 per cent of Pakistani women suffer some form of violence. But Mukhtaran believes her bravery has already made a difference.
"We heard of several cases of women who were being beaten by their husbands," she told me. "They warn them: 'You better stop because if you continue like this, we will go to Mukhtaran Bibi.' "
Then, in March of this year, the nightmare started afresh. Finding flaws in the original prosecution, an appeal court hearing in nearby Multan overturned the rape convictions. Five of the six men should be released immediately, the judges ordered.
Pakistan's liberal community was outraged. One national newspaper wrote a front-page editorial condemning the decision as a "national tragedy".
"This is not a case in which a woman has been raped," wrote the respected Daily Times. "This is a case in which a nation has been raped."
Two weeks ago Mukhtaran's plight got even worse, when the government placed her on the exit control list. The ham-fisted move had its roots in the president's obsession with image. Musharraf, a military general who came to power in a coup in 1999, dislikes his country's association with international terrorism, sectarian violence and nuclear proliferation intrigues. Instead he prefers to stress his policy of "enlightened moderation", advancing the idea that Pakistan is a tourist- and business-friendly country that promotes tolerance and democracy.
So when Mukhtaran applied for a US visa, officials went into a spin. Musharraf, who was on tour in New Zealand, faced a barrage of hostile questions. He took full responsibility for the travel ban. Mukhtaran had been invited to the US by non-governmental organisations who wanted to "bad-mouth" Pakistan over the "terrible state of women", he said.
"She was told not to go," he told reporters. "I don't want to project the bad image of Pakistan. I am a realist. Public relations is the most important thing in the world."
If they are, he could hardly have devised a worse strategy. The crude gagging order was spectacularly counter-productive.Local and international media flocked to the story, interviewing Mukhtaran by phone. Eventually, the authorities cut off her phone line. Musharraf's "soft" image was no longer plausible.
At home, critics saw yet more evidence of a president who was neither enlightened nor moderate. He has already given in to Islamic conservatives several times this year, most recently on the symbolic issue of whether women should be allowed to run alongside men in public marathons.
In Washington, secretary of state Rice authorised her officials to issue a public scolding.
"We were confronted with what I can only say was an outrageous situation where her attackers were ordered to be freed while she had restrictions on her travel placed on her," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "We conveyed our views about these restrictions to the senior levels of the Pakistani government."
Now Mukhtaran will visit the US, but only after the legal imbroglio of her case is sorted out. Pakistan's Supreme Court has now intervened, and has convened a special summer hearing - beginning this Monday - to decide Mukhtaran's case. Aitzaz Ahsan, a leading lawyer and former law minister, is representing her.
Once again, the illiterate daughter of a Punjabi timber merchant is in the front line of women's rights in a notoriously male-dominated society.
"This will be an important test case," said Ahsan. "The world is watching."