Licence To Kill

We just saw a 2000 BBC documentary about how women are treated, under law, in Khalid Hasan's pathetic Pakistan.

Licence To Kill is the staggering story of a diseased society where women can be killed, under law, without any meaningful consequence. Here a young man kills his own mother, another who accepts money to absolve his brothers of cold blooded murder of his wife, and yet another prosperous pillar of society -- all evidence suggests -- is complicit in the murder of his own daughter in the supposedly secure chambers of her lawyer.

And how does the -- surely viagra challenged -- Pakistani establishment react? Read the following and judge for yourself:

There is also the case of Samia Sarwar the daughter of a wealthy businessman and Head of the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce, another who wouldn't listen. When she sought divorce from her violent husband she was gunned down in the office of her lawyer Hina Jilani. The killer was taken there by her own mother.

A resolution was tabled in Pakistan's Senate, condemning her murder, honour killings and violence against women. It failed. Last August, of the 87 Senators in the upper house of Pakistan's parliament only four voted for the motion and condemned the killing of women.

Those who voted against the resolution argue honour killings are a deterrent to sexual immorality, an effective means of social control.

And if you thought there's been any social advance in the five years since this documentary first aired, read this Reuters story from earlier this very month:

Pakistani girl, 15, flees in fear of honour killing

Fifteen. She is just fifteen and people want to kill her in the name of honour. A terrified child cowers for her life in this society -- how does one even talk about peace and Pakistan in the same sentence?

Frankly speaking, it's not clear at all why we seek peace with this state? If peace were offered on a platter, morality demands we turn away -- for what is peace worth with a state that condones such barbarity? Do we seek peace only to impotently look away from rampant state-sanctioned violence against our Pakistani sisters?

Woe unto anyone who seeks such immoral peace. Do we really want economic gain over the graves of these terrified and murdered women? Woe unto anyone who seeks such economic gain.