Running from death in Pak

Meeting secretly at her hiding place in the marshes surrounding Daharki town, 550 km north of Karachi, Lakhmira sobbed and shook with fear as she recounted her nightmare.

‘‘In our culture it is impossible for a girl to live after being declared a kari, even if it is a false charge,” she moaned. “Only God knows the truth.’’

Literally a ‘‘black woman’’, a kari is a woman accused of having sex outside of marriage, while karo is the male version.

Lakhmira’s husband, Dilawar (40), declared her a kari after she told people that his nephews were molesting her, wounding male pride in an influential family of the Shar tribe.

Between 2001 and 2004, official estimates put the number of karo kari murders at over 4,000. Honour killings were banned earlier this year. But little has changed, say rights groups. Kamila Hyat, a director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said she had not heard of any prosecutions for the crime.

Lakhmira lives in Ghotki, a district dominated by chieftains of feudal and tribal communities in a region that has Sindh’s highest number of kari killings. District police officer Iqbal Kadri says he knows the killings take place, but he cannot make a case because of the reluctance of victims’ families to come forward due to social stigma.

When cases do come to light, it is often because they involve large sums of money, or property. According to a local journalist, around a dozen women are declared kari every month in Ghotki district.

‘‘It is convenient to declare a man or woman karo or kari to settle old enmities and property disputes,’’ he said. Sometimes a compensation deal may be brokered or the village head may arrange for the woman to be sold, but often such cases end in death, he added. —Reuters