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Imprisoned and Deported for Rape

Jill

For being raped, that is.

Sixteen-year-old Isma Mahmood was deported to Pakistan last month after serving six months in shackles and handcuffs in a prison in Saudi Arabia. Her crime: being raped by a Saudi man.

Some crime.

“It’s difficult for me to talk about what happened to me, from rape to prison and from prison to deportation,” Isma said in the office of a rescue trust in Karachi where she sat with her sister Muna, 18, who was also deported.

Isma’s parents, originally from the central Pakistani city of Multan, were trafficked to Saudi Arabia around 20 years ago. “Though both of us were born there, we are Pakistanis,” Isma said.

Human rights groups say that hundreds of people, particularly young women, are still trafficked from South Asia every year, with many going on to face a life blighted by physical and often sexual abuse.

This is a good example of how things like trafficking have generational impacts. Yet too many countries — including the United States — don’t have proper procedures for dealing with trafficking victims. Like in this case, they’re often charged with prostitution and then put through an unsympathetic criminal justice system, or simply deported. Of course, the criminal “justice” system in Saudi Arabia doesn’t even approach just.

The women prisoners were mostly Pakistanis, Indonesians, Bangladeshis and Nigerians. Most of them came to Saudi Arabia through trafficking networks and were charged with prostitution, she said.

“No one would believe what it was like,” Muna said.

“When I used to protest against the ill treatment they beat me on my back,” Isma added. “We were chained all during this period. The only time jail officials removed the chain was during lunch or when anyone went to the bathroom or at prayer time,” she said.

“Once a jail official offered me help and assured me I would be released if I agreed to sleep with him … There was a Pakistani woman who was over 40 years old and developed Aids in prison, but she remained in chains before she was deported to Pakistan,” she added.

Read the whole thing.

4 thoughts on Imprisoned and Deported for Rape

  1. Pingback: Unwilling Self-Negation » Saudis Deport A Girl Who Was Raped (By A Saudi)

  4. I’m amazed by their bravery in going to the police despite the threats, and in fighting to defend themselves even when the police proved not only unsympathetic but actually sadistic. So many times these stories have a paternalistic ring to them, with little indication that the women involved made any attempt to fight on their own behalf. And I suspect that in many cases this is because the women have been brought up to believe they don’t have the right to fight for themselves, and so they don’t fight.

    Hideous as this story is, the one refreshing aspect is that these young women, apparently brought up in Saudi Arabia, of all places, and members of an abused class even there, nevertheless had the independence and confidence in their own human rights to struggle to defend themselves. It makes me think that even Saudi Arabia is not completely lost to humanity. In some ways this is a story of hope as much as a story of tragedy.

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