open letter to the general

Saturday, June 18, 2005

I stopped Mai from going abroad: president
AUCKLAND: President General Pervez Musharraf said on Friday that he ordered a travel ban on Mukhtar Mai to protect Pakistan’s image abroad.Gen Musharraf said Mukhtar Mai, the victim of a punchayat-ordered gang rape, was being taken to the United States by foreign non-government organisations “to bad-mouth Pakistan” over the “terrible state” of the nation’s women. He said NGOs are “Westernised fringe elements” which “are as bad as the Islamic extremists”.He acknowledged that he placed the 36-year-old on the list of people banned from leaving Pakistan while responding to media questions during a three-day visit to New Zealand.“She was told not to go” to the United States to appear on media there to tell her story, Gen Musharraf told the Auckland Foreign Correspondents’ Club. The government lifted the travel ban on Wednesday after Mai appealed to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Musharraf said atrocities are perpetrated daily against women in developing nations round the world - “in Kashmir and many other places”.“I don’t want to project the bad image of Pakistan,” he told the journalists’ club.“I am a realist. Public relations is the most important thing in the world,” he said, adding that media misperceptions would discourage tourists from travelling to Pakistan.“Pakistan is the victim of poor perceptions. The reality is very different,” he said. He defended his regime’s treatment of women, saying it was working for their emancipation. Rape was not “a rampant malaise Pakistan suffers from every day,” he said. He said he was on the side of women and was trying to bring rapists to “justice in the strongest form”. His government was encouraging the emancipation of women through education and by reducing high death rates for women and children. Women’s right were also discussed during earlier talks with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. “This is a country with many women in powerful positions so we do take an interest. So I certainly have been satisfied today that President Musharraf shares that concern and would like to see his country move,” she said. As well as Clark, New Zealand’s top judge, parliamentary speaker and top business leader are all women.


Very dissapointing,Mr. President.either u have some really bad advisors or you just got your judgement horribly wrong this time round.anyway ure realism ended up doing what u intended to prevent and that is bad PR.infact we r getting hammered in the press.

ure right when u say that Pakistan gets picked on more than other countries and that its negatives are highlighted more vigorously but that doesnt mean we ourselves stick our heads in the sand and pretend as if nothing happened or is happening.we have a brutal tribal/feudal cultural system where a woman is considered to be less than an animal and its sickening.and instead of trying to protect this country's image by preventing the victim from highlighting her case you should be trying ure best to smash this jirga/panchayat nonsense once and for all.better start walking the walk with the talk.and please dont let ure dislike for NGO's cloud your judgement.they do good work on the whole.their attitudes like the mullahs on the other side of the political spectrum can be uncompromising but at least their ideals are way more admirable.there can be no enlightened moderation if the rights of women cant be protected and promoted and frankly we still have miles to go in this regard and such incidents dont help one bit!!