Pakistan's President - "Get Yourself Raped"

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MrsSpringsteen

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just unbelievable..:| :barf:

Musharraf's remarks on rapes criticized
Pakistani leader urged to apologize

By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters | September 17, 2005

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Outrage mounted in Pakistan and abroad yesterday over President Pervez Musharraf's comment that many Pakistanis felt that crying rape was an easy way to make money and move to Canada.

Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada has already condemned the remarks made by Musharraf, who is in the United States having addressed the UN General Assembly on Wednesday.

Amnesty International, the human rights group based in London, said Musharraf should apologize, and newspapers in Pakistan decried their leader's attitude.

Musharraf told The Washington Post in an interview published Tuesday that Pakistan should not be singled out on rape issues as other countries had the same problems. ''You must understand the environment in Pakistan. . . . This has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped," the Post quoted Musharraf as saying.

Dawn, Pakistan's leading English-language daily, criticized Musharraf in an editorial headlined ''Wrong thing to say".

''If this attitude, of blaming rape and other crimes against women on women themselves and ridiculing NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] that take up such issues, begins to travel upward from ignorant mullahs and male chauvinists to permeate the higher echelons of the administration, then God help us," it said.
 
I can almost, really, really stretching it.... see what Pakistan's President is getting at.....


but yeah, I like

''Wrong thing to say".

a bit of an understatement..... just a bit....... :down:
 
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A Malaysian politician has made very similar comments.

I have increasingly little time for Islam, frankly.
 
I am more than willing to link Islam and misogyny, but with Pervez Musharraf it may well be more cultural than religious in base. Not defending the comments or sentiments behind them ~ the treatment of women in Pakistan especially the tribal regions, can be atrocious and there are plenty of good reasons for women to seek refuge from them.

For comparison this ones straight from Australia with our very own Sheik Faiz Mohammed
A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one else to blame but herself.... She displayed her beauty to the entire world. She degraded herself by being an object of desire
 
Jeez.


It seems that world leaders are not having a very good PR month. It's been a great month for sound bites. From "taking out" the President of Venezuela (OK, that wasn't the Prez but it was quoted worldwide), and "Excuse my French, people of America, but I am pissed" to "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." And now this.

Certainly not comparing Mutsherrif's attitudes on rape to the doozies uttered by Americans lately, (degrees of vileness, I mean), just making a neutral observation about the amount of memorable quotes to come across the wires the past few weeks.

Can it be all the extra carbon dioxide in the air these days ? *cough*. What are our leaders breathing? Cause they're sure spouting a lot of polluted air. Polluted by their defective brains.
 
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Kieran McConville said:
yah like attitudes to rape are exclusive to islam. sure. whatever.


No, not just Islam. In some form, everywhere. I've heard statements almost like it here almost every week--from school administrations protecting star athletes, to juries not wanting to ruin the poor man's life. In any society where the value of a woman is considered less than a man (legal standing or not), rape will never be taken as seriously as it should and I don't know that I can think of any society where that is not the case.
And I'm not just talking the attitudes of men here.
 
MrsSpringsteen said:


they're definitely not

I hope no one thinks that was my intention w/ this thread, it wasn't at all


Don't worry, Mrs. S. I think most people understood your intent. We were just bringing it back to focus. I thought yours was a great post to highlight the attitudes people have about rape, another outrageous comment in a sea of outrageous comments everywhere.

(By the way (totally unrelated and absolutely off such a serious topic:reject:) I just bought Johnny Damon's Idiot for a friend. Is it any good? Slinks away.)

Edited because I accidentally chose an inappropriate smilie icon.
 
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I'm honestly not surprised. In some parts of Pakistan it's highly undesirable to be a woman, you get treated like :censored:. Still, how stupid to say something like this in public. I have a Pakistani friend. I haven't talked to him about this, I'll bet he's mad.
 
For Honor said:
I can almost, really, really stretching it.... see what Pakistan's President is getting at.....

excuse me? please tell me i'm misreading your post.

:|



blaming women for rape, same old shit, different day.

:mad:
 
I was kind of ignoring For Honor's post because I was reading it the same way Dandy was and hoping I was wrong although I couldn't figure out how I was. But maybe For Honor will explain just how far he was stretching it. I'm sure there is a rational explanation. Please?
 
Sigh.

And the worst part is the view/attitude held by Musharraf is quite common throughout the world and is held by many of both genders and all (and no) religions.

I am pleased to see he was harshly and quickly criticised for the comments.
 
A_Wanderer said:
I am more than willing to link Islam and misogyny, but with Pervez Musharraf it may well be more cultural than religious in base. Not defending the comments or sentiments behind them ~ the treatment of women in Pakistan especially the tribal regions, can be atrocious and there are plenty of good reasons for women to seek refuge from them.

For comparison this ones straight from Australia with our very own Sheik Faiz Mohammed

Did you hear that story recently about the dr who's sons were accused of rape and he defended the boys, going so far as to make the now infamous comment when watching the video that his boy "would make a good gynocologist"?
They are Pakis too. Does this mean all Pakistanis feel like this? Dunno. But I'm not going to give any who claim this bullshit the benefit of the doubt.
 
President Pervez Musharraf's comment that many Pakistanis felt that crying rape was an easy way to make money and move to Canada.

Good lord. Knowing that moronic pieces of rectal sputum like this are running the world, I frequently wonder why I bother breathing.
 
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I don't have time to go into all the details, but just to clarify...Musharraf's remarks here have nothing to do with Islam; rather, this was his warped idea of damage control for the Mukhtaran Mai rape case, to which he was specifically referring when he made those comments--and which (not at all incidentally) has brought Pakistan an awful lot of bad PR from human rights groups lately. Musharraf (who is not a religious man) has always loathed NGOs in general and human rights groups in particular; he regards them as wolves in sheep's clothing, dedicated to preserving Western imperialism even as they use the pretext of "universal human rights" to chip away at the moral authority of non-Western nations. Unsurprisingly given this perspective, he also loathes it when Pakistanis like Mukhtaran "collaborate" with human rights groups on what he views as smear campaigns against Pakistan. That is why he barred her from travelling to Canada.

In addition, as A_Wanderer suggested, it doesn't help matters that many (NOT most!) Pakistanis--especially in the northwestern tribal areas--regard cases like Mukhtaran's (who was gang-raped by order of the village council as punishment on her family for her brother's alleged fornication...he was gang-raped too, as well as beaten to a pulp, so don't think he got off easy) as nothing more or less than the way things always have been and always will be done. That is certainly not Musharraf's cultural background, but given the lengths he has to go to just to evade assassination, it seems unlikely that he will be the one to change it.

Of course, that is no excuse for his cavalier attitude towards rape victims, and the trouncing he's taken from the Pakistani dailies (Jang, Dawn, Daily News) strongly suggests most Pakistanis would agree that his remarks only made the bad PR worse.
 
BonosSaint said:
I was kind of ignoring For Honor's post because I was reading it the same way Dandy was and hoping I was wrong although I couldn't figure out how I was. But maybe For Honor will explain just how far he was stretching it. I'm sure there is a rational explanation. Please?

same here

I don't think I want to know the explanation :|
 
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post September 19, 2005

WASHINGTON -- General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, has denied telling The Washington Post in an interview last week that rape has become a ''money-making concern" in Pakistan and that many Pakistanis felt it was an easy way to make money and get a Canadian visa.

The comments have outraged women's groups and sparked protests across Pakistan, marring a high-profile trip Musharraf has made to the United States to promote a moderate image of Pakistan -- in speeches to a Jewish group and a women's group -- while attending the UN General Assembly. Canada's prime minister, Paul Martin, formally protested the reported remarks in a meeting with Musharraf during the UN gathering.

''Let me say with total sincerity that I never said that and it has been misquoted," Musharraf told the women's group. ''These are not my words and I would go to the extent of saying I am not so silly and stupid to make comments of this sort."

In an interview with CNN Saturday, Musharraf said the remarks were made by someone else in his presence and not him.

The rape comments were not the main focus of the article, published Tuesday, which covered a broad range of topics in a 50-minute interview. In the 12th paragraph of the article, the Post quoted Musharraf: ''This has become a money-making concern. A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped."

The interview was conducted by three Washington Post reporters and tape-recorded. A review of the recording yesterday confirmed Musharraf made the remarks and was accurately quoted.

Musharraf made the remarks at the end of a nine-minute discussion of the case of Mukhtar Mai, a 33-year-old illiterate woman who spoke publicly about being gang-raped on the orders of village council in 2002. Mai, bucking taboos, won public sympathy and government support after she demanded that the men be charged and convicted. Earlier this year, Musharraf was rebuked by the Bush administration when he blocked her from traveling to the United States to publicize the case.

In the interview, Musharraf said he was ''on the side of women" but that Pakistan was being unfairly ''singled out when this curse is happening everywhere in the world." Speaking of another high-profile rape case, he said he had arranged for a visa and $50,000 to be given to Dr. Shazia Khalid -- a Pakistani medical doctor who was raped by a masked intruder -- so she could leave the country. Khalid has applied for asylum in Canada.

Then, as the reporters prepared to move to the next question, Musharraf interjected the comments about rape as a moneymaking concern, saying it was the ''popular term" in Islamabad.
 
Good insight from Yolland.

Musharraf is realizing it's getting harder and harder for him to keep the mullahs happy while positioning himself as a friend of the West.

The religious angle here isn't that Islam condones rape (I believe Shariah law dictates execution for those found guilty of rape), but that the mullahs don't like to see women's groups speaking out for women's rights in an Islamic country such as Pakistan. And, yes, in the rural areas where they have their own codes governing relations between families, villages, clans, etc., they don't like to see outspoken women. Very very backward indeed...i go to Pakistan often...women's groups have their work cut out, but they are making small gains.
 
Judah said:
...the mullahs don't like to see women's groups speaking out for women's rights in an Islamic country such as Pakistan.

Agreed in principle..and yet...it was actually a local imam, Mulvi Razzaq, who persuaded Mukhtaran Mai and her family to file charges in the first place. He was also the first to publicly condemn her attackers (during a service at the mosque), and it was he who brought the first journalist to the village to report on the case. Unfortunately, Razzaq is not a powerful mullah, just a humble village imam..much as Mukhtaran Mai's family is also poor and marginalized, unlike the powerful and thuggish clan whose members raped her and her brother.

Also--unless the case has changed dramatically recently and I missed it--those men do at least remain in detention, awaiting Supreme Court retrial after a district court threw out the original court's death sentence. And it was, in fact, the Pakistani government who got the Supreme Court to intervene at that point...so, it is possible that Musharraf's position on the case itself (as opposed to the publicity surrounding it) may not be so hostile as some assume.
 
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