Pakistan gang rape outrage sparks payout

[nycmuzik]

MUZAFFARGARH, Pakistan (AP) -- Police searching for four men accused in the gang rape of an 18-year-old girl as a tribal punishment believe they have fled their village to evade authorities, a senior officer said Thursday.

As outrage at the teen-ager's rape grew, the government handed her a check for 500,000 rupees (dlrs 8,000) as compensation and said a new school would be built in her honor.

The gang rape took place June 22 in Meerwala village in southern Punjab province. Police said a tribal council ordered the rape as punishment for the victim's family after her 11-year-old brother was seen walking unchaperoned with a girl from a tribe considered higher-caste. The victim's family were from the Gujar tribe, the other tribe were Mastoi.

Pakistan has a tradition of tribal justice in which crimes or affronts to dignity are punished outside the framework of Pakistani law. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has demanded an end to punishments by tribal councils.

Police say the tribal verdict was illegal, and that they have detained eight relatives of the suspects to pressure the perpetrators into surrendering.

The suspects are well known in the village but have disappeared since the rape.

New school

Police said Thursday said were questioning Meerwala residents about whether the suspects had relatives living in cities or large towns in other parts of Pakistan to which the accused men may have fled.

"We are doing our best and hopefully the accused persons will soon be arrested," Deputy Inspector General Police Asef Hayyat told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Pakistan's Supreme Court has called senior police to a special hearing Friday to hear progress in the case.

Attiya Inayatullah, Pakistan's women's' affairs minister, visited the family Thursday to hand over the compensation check.

She said President Pervez Musharraf had ordered that an Islamic religious school be built in the village in the victim's name.

Villagers told local officials who visited Meerwala on Wednesday that the rape was the second in the region recently. A week earlier, a girl in a nearby village committed suicide after being raped by two tribesmen, villagers said. Local police said Wednesday two men had been arrested in that case.

On Thursday, Inayatullah promised that the government would vigorously pursue suspects involved in such crimes.

[georgym]

Sick Bastards :mad3:

I hope they find them and hang them by their balls.

[mfiorellino]

The fact that a whole village let that happen without anybody saying anything is extremely disturbing. Kind of shows you how demented their society is.

[t0nythelover]

is it really dementia? its so easy to say they are demented because they are foreign, but we do it too. amadou diallo shot 41 times in the street and they pretty much got away with it. take a look in your own backyard my friend and tell me whos scarier, them or us.

[mfiorellino]

Sorry but I have to disagree with you on this. I would rather live in U.S.A. than in Pakistan and I think most people would agree with me on that. There's a bit of a difference between the police shooting somebody by accident and having a gang rape with a whole village watching. While the Diallo case was an abomination too the whole city of New York was not cheering on the culprits. While that rape was going on, the father of the victim was begging them to stop and nobody in the village helped him out. I believe that if a gang rape was taking place in public in America somebody would have the courage to put an end to it or at the very least call the police. And that is what separates us from them. Sure our court system isn't perfect, O.J. Simpson got away with murder too but I have yet to hear of a court case in America where an innocent girl is sentenced to be gang raped.