Mukhtaran Bibi - A True Survivor

Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman, was scheduled to attend an Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women conference in the U.S later this month. Ms. Bibi’s courageous story begins in a rural village in Pakistan where her brother was found guilty of sodomy. To punish her brother for this, while inhumane and backwards, wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows since most Americans have heard such stories of moral ultra-conservatism from backwater countries like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and Alabama. But the village’s tribal council decided to punish her brother by sentencing Ms. Bibi to be gang-raped by eight men. Ms. Bibi somehow managed to overcome this trauma, meted out by her own government, and went to on to work for female empowerment by founding schools for girls and helping other rape victims. Upon hearing her intentions to leave the country to attend the U.S. convention, the Pakistani government put her on house arrest. She is now a prisoner in Pakistan because she chose to speak out about her country’s injustices. At the next tribal council, the U.S. needs to vote Pakistan out of its “alliance of the willing”. Its abhorrent record on human rights and its dictator “president” are too much to justify a continued American relationship.