EmailThere the similarity ends. On Tuesday, Rukshana's mother and brother were jailed for life at Nottingham Crown Court. The judge condemned the murder as brutal. In Lahore, nobody has been arrested for Samia's murder, no government minister has condemned the killing, and the only people with anything to fear are the lawyers and activists to whom Samia turned for help.
Samia, 28, arrived at the Lahore law offices of Hina Jilani and Asma Jahangir, who are sisters, on April 6. She had engaged Jilani a few days earlier, because she wanted a divorce from her violent husband. Samia settled on a chair across the desk from the lawyer. Sultana, Samia's mother, entered five minutes later with a male companion. Samia half-rose in greeting. The man, Habib-ur-Rhemna, grabbed Samia and put a pistol to her head.
The first bullet entered near Samia's eye and she fell. "There was no scream. There was dead silence. I don't even think she knew what was happening," Jilani said. The killer stood over Samia's body, and fired again. Jilani reached for the alarm button as the gunman and Sultana left. "She never even bothered to look whether the girl was dead."
The violence didn't end there. When Habib and Sultana left the office, a man waiting on the crowded benches in the hallway also pulled out a gun. It was Samia's paternal uncle, Yunus. A women's activist who works in the same building, Shahtaj Qizilbash, popped her head out of her office; Yunus grabbed her hand and pulled her downstairs. They kept on moving even after a police guard shot Habib in the back, and flagged down an auto-rickshaw.
All three crammed in: Yunus, armed and screaming at the driver to hurry, Sultana and Shahtaj. The rickshaw arrived at Faletti's, a crumbling Raj-era hotel where Samia's father, Ghulam Sarwar, was standing in the drive."Yunus stepped out of the rick-shaw and said: 'The work has been done'." Shahtaj recalled: "There was no expression on the father's face. " The brothers told Shahtaj she was free to leave; Yunus insisted on seeing her to a taxi. He told her the family had chosen that Samia's life would end in front of the lawyer who helped plot her escape.
It was the most common Pakistani crime of passion, motivated by "honour" and shame; the killers are almost always relatives of the victim. In local parlance, Samia's was an honour killing, meant to rub out the shame of a divorce, an affair, or even an unsanctioned journey outside the marital home. In southern Sindh province, where the practice is most common, 300 women were killed in the name of honour in 1997, according to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Although Jilani filed a complaint against the Sawars, by the time the police began the search the suspects were staying in another province with a former provincial chief minister. It is unlikely that they will ever face trial. Habib, the killer, has since died.
Samia's death has generated extreme passion, not for her killers to be brought to justice, but for Jahangir and Jilani to be punished for protecting her. Although Pakistan is a society in transition, the government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif does not support modernity. Activists argue the government has given tacit encouragement to such crimes by seeking to make Islamic practice the supreme law in the country, making it politically impossible to take a hard line against those who kill in the name of religion.
Samia Imran was the daughter of wealthy parents, who had given her a grand wedding to her first cousin in 1989 - three chief ministers and a governor were among 1,000 guests paying tribute to one of Peshawar's most respected businessmen. But the marriage was unhappy. By 1995, when she was pregnant with her second son, and worn down by years of violence, Samia left and the family took her in. Her husband was banned from the house; he now lives in Britain.
Samia's parents encouraged her to return to college to study law, but by the time she made the appointment with Jilani, she was living in Dastak, the only private women's refuge in Lahore. "She used to say: 'My parents told me you can get anything you want here, except a divorce', " said a friend at the shelter. "She was always saying: 'They will kill me'. She said her family wants to keep the honour of the tribe. That was more important than her life." Founded by Jilani, Dastak is a place where women who have transgressed against a traditional code live in shabby rooms behind windows smeared with mud or plastered with newspapers to hide unfriendly gazes.
Ghulam Sarwar, president of the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce, describes his daughter's childhood as one of luxury and freedom. He himself married for love, meeting Sultana, a gynaecologist, during his rounds as a pharmaceutical representative for an American firm. He is anxious that people understand he is a liberal. His version of events is that Jilani insulted the gunman. Provoked, he fired at her, and Samia was caught in the crossfire. Sarwar is candid that he could never countenance a divorce for Samia. "We always wanted to keep things under cover, even these days when there are problems in every family." Even on repeated questioning, Sarwar will not condemn honour killing: "I am not in a position to change society. Everyone must have honour. Everyone must possess honour."
Those who kill for honour are almost never punished. In the rare instances cases reach the courts, the killers are sentenced to just two or three years. Hana Jilani has collected 150 case studies and in only eight did the judges reject the argument that the women were killed for honour. All the others were let off, or given reduced sentences. For decades, the sisters have fought the cases other firms dread: rape victims accused of sexual transgression; Christians accused of insulting the Prophet. Asma Jahangir is also the head of the Human Rights Commission. "My job would be much easier if I could say I don't take cases which go against tradition. My life would be much less fraught with danger," said Jilani. This week she begged the government to protect the shelter, fearing that religious activists would attack it.
Three days after Samia's death, the Peshawar Daily Mashriq ran an advertisement announcing the dates for a demonstration against "a dirty conspiracy against Islam, Pakistan, family life as we know it". The targets were Jilani, Jahangir and the women's shelter, and so violent were the threats against the lawyers that they moved the courts to prosecute for incitement. The courts did not respond.
The demonstration was just the start. Members of Pakistan's upper house demanded punishment for the two women and none of Pakistan's political leaders condemned the attack. Samia's murder promises further ruptures between tradition and reform - and more violence. The clergy in Peshawar want the lawyers to be put to death. It is hard to predict whether the rule of law, or the social sanction that protects Samia's killers, will prevail in Pakistan.
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