One of the gutsiest people on earth is Mukhtaran Bibi. And after this week, she'll need that courage just to survive.Read the whole thing here. Many thanks to Kristof for continuing to write about this.
Mukhtaran, a tall, slim young woman who never attended school as a child, lives in a poor and remote village in the Punjab area of Pakistan. As part of a village dispute in 2002, a tribal council decided to punish her family by sentencing her to be gang-raped. She begged and cried, but four of her neighbors immediately stripped her and carried out the sentence. Then her tormenters made her walk home naked while her father tried to shield her from the eyes of 300 villagers.
Mukhtaran was meant to be so shamed that she would commit suicide. But in a society where women are supposed to be soft and helpless, she proved indescribably tough, and she found the courage to live. She demanded the prosecution of her attackers...
You know how I feel about America; I can't wait to leave. But every day I am grateful to have grown up in the world I did. Geography is still destiny, and we must never forget that women and children around the world are routinely denied basic human rights.
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