2021 Minar-e-Pakistan mass sexual assault

On 14 August 2021 (Pakistan Independence Day), TikToker Ayesha Akram was assaulted by a crowd as she and her team visited Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, Pakistan. In a video that went viral days later, the crowd is seen picking up the woman, brutally tearing off her clothes, and throwing her up in the air.

The case later turned out to be a pre-planned incident for getting fame and extortion money during police investigation. Audiotapes emerged of victim and her associate Rambo about the planning which later on both blamed one another for blackmailing.

Incident

@ Minar e Pakistan

"...From dusk till night,
through calls to prayer,
400 Pakistani men celebrated
Independence Day doing
what they know best:
humiliating a woman..."

Independence for whom?
~ Hiba Sohail, The News,
September 06, 2021

Ayesha Akram, a nurse by profession and freelance TikToker and YouTube vlogger, and her team members were attacked, molested, and looted by a large crowd in the evening of 14 August 2021. The incident took place on the 75th independence anniversary of Pakistan in the precincts Minar-e-Pakistan near Greater Iqbal Park. According to reports, the situation lasted from 6:30 p.m. to 8:40 p.m. In her first information report, Akram stated that she and her six companions were shooting a video near the monument when a mob of around 300 to 400 people surrounded and attacked them. Akram was quoted as saying "the crowd was huge and people were scaling the enclosure and coming towards us". Akram said that she and her companions tried as hard as they could to escape from the crowd. Observing the situation, the park's security guard opened the gate to the enclosure around Minar-e-Pakistan. Akram said that the men broke and jumped over the fence, surged towards her and started pulling on her. She said that as they grasped her, they tore off her clothes and tossed her into the air. She said that some men tried to help her, but the crowd was overwhelmingly large and they could not do anything.

Akram also said that the mob of men also assaulted a friend and snatched his cellphone and Rs15,000. They forcefully took off her gold ring and gold earrings, Akram said. Calls to police were not responded to in time and spectators could not help.

Medico-legal examination

According to media reports of Dunya News and Samaa TV, a medical examination of Ayesha Akram was conducted at Nawaz Sharif Teaching Hospital on 19 August 2021. According to a Geo TV news report on 20 August 2021, the Punjab government issued the medical examination report of the victim which confirmed details of her injuries after being assaulted. According to a medico-legal report, the victim was found to have dozens of bruises and scratches on the body including her chest, waist, legs and elbow plus inflammation on the neck and hands.

Police investigation

Global concern over the incident questioned why Pakistan was not able to provide a safe environment for women against sexual violence even at its national monument and during a national holiday. Police geo-fenced 28,000 people and shortlisted 350 suspects, two of whom qualified for pre-arrest bail. The police arrested 161 suspects but as victims could identify only six of them in an identification parade, 155 suspects were released. On the basis of a supplementary statement made by Akram, police also arrested some of her associates to investigate allegations of blackmailing.

Debate in media and social media

@ Minar e Pakistan

"...How many women
will it take
...to realise that
we have a big problem
in the way we
view and treat women?
And for our government officials
who don't want issues
to be highlighted
lest we "tarnish"
Pakistan's image —
our image is
being tarnished by
the assaulters, not the people
crying out for
protection for our
citizens or the victims.

Images @ dawn.com
18 Aug, 2021

Rapid increases in cases of violence against women provoked a debate about the failure to protect women in Pakistan; examining the culture of impunity for perpetrators and the reasons behind society's tendency to restrain women's independence and inflict pain on them. In a video interview given to Deutsche Welle, journalist Arzoo Kazmi commented that following Akram's assault, Pakistani society was sliding back into regressive, conservative policies like those of the Zia-ul-Haq era, noting how restrictions on women's freedom of movement and education leads to disrespectful behavior towards women in public places. Many politicians and public figures, including activists, celebrities, and members of civil society, condemned the incident on social and mainstream media. Mehmil Khalid Kunwar quoted a report by the advocacy group Sustainable Social Development Organisation (SSDO), noting 6,754 women were kidnapped and 1,890 raped in the first six months of 2021 in Punjab province alone, but the rate of reporting in media of these events remained low. For example, 938 out of 3,721 cases of gender-based violence were chronicled in media reports. Kunwar says the low reporting of incidents makes women feel more vulnerable about their security and protection in social settings.

Hashtags "Minar-e-Pakistan", "Lahore incident" and "400 men, yes all men" trended on social media. "Yes all men" trended as a hashtag, in refutation to the phrase "not all men" that is frequently used by men in response to incidents of sexual violence against women in Pakistan. Some sectors of Pakistani society said the victim and her friend had invited fans and that her boldness on her TikTok videos contributed to the incident. Some, using the hashtag "#NotAllMen", said the assault was a publicity stunt organised by Akram. A court case against Akram was filed to that effect but the court rejected the petition. Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan blamed the incident on the availability of smartphones. His remarks made many critics of Khan recall a previous (June 2021) statement, "…If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the men unless they are robots… If you raise temptation in society to a point – and all these young guys have nowhere to go – it has a consequence in the society". He was criticised for suggesting that an increase in sexual violence was related to how women dress and behave.

Other sectors of the media criticised these explanations as victim-blaming.

According to Salman Akram Raja (a prominent supreme court advocate in Pakistan), far from Pakistan's argued superior local cultural upbringing, with its profound offerings of decency, the mobsters at Minar-e-Pakistan lost their self-restraint, religious or other, which would have expected them to protect the confined woman, or even any TikToker. Raja said that the reactions across electronic, print and social media platforms that rapidly transformed the helpless hurled around, stripped body of the molested woman to slut shame woman saying "The boys must be punished but the woman asked for it.", claiming the victim to be an attention-seeking conspirator against Pakistan. Raja said a cursory study of Muttahida Ulema Board approved Single National Curriculum textbooks since 2020 indicated that girls and women in hijab or purdah who would not seek to enjoy freedoms like music and singing have become the resumed standard of the idealised 'good woman/child' and that the assaulted woman at Minar-e-Pakistan failed that norm.

According to Kamila Hyat of The News International, those who blame victims said Akram was responsible for provoking the violence against herself, perhaps by blowing kisses to some of her fans, who she supposedly invited to the event; by posing for selfies with people in her own group; or by allowing the young man who had accompanied her to put an arm around her shoulder. Hyat said the fact that the victim did not consent to being groped, hustled, thrown into the air, squeezed, and almost rendered unconscious is evident. Actress Yashma Gill said that since men have the free will and power to choose right from wrong, the victim is blameless. According to journalist Rajaa Moini, Akram was physically assaulted and faced exceedingly negative scrutiny because for many Pakistanis, her visibility on TikTok, freely accessing "digital freedoms", was construed to mean that she had questionable morals, which validated the attack to prevent cultural degradation.

Moini said that enabling and justifying violence, specifically against women, often involved the weaponisation of their personal information. Vlogger Maria Amir noted that having video evidence go viral on social media is not victim-friendly, but often is the only way to attract public attention and assemble enough indignation to motivate authorities to take action. Viral videos have also been effective in persuading Pakistani men that violence against women — which Pakistani women protest about at Aurat Marches and what men have rejected routinely as "western propaganda used to malign Pakistan" — is both real and deadly. According to Muhammad Moiz, a global policy practitioner, while TikTok and Instagram, as well as the increased visibility they provide, are newer technology, controlling women's acts of self-expression and pleasure predate social media. Moiz and Shmyla Khan, an activist for digital privacy and online gender expression, note that digital media simply imports pre-existing power structures to social media platforms, becoming a new means of committing violence upon others.

Moini noted that gendered treatment of the word azad holds a unique significance in the Urdu language. Typically it inspires reverence and pride, but in the context of women, it represents hostility and revulsion. In Pakistan, azad mulk (a free country) is cause for celebration and revelry, yet azad aurat (a free woman) is considered an active threat to the nation and violent actions taken against women's decadence are justifiably accepted. Amir concurred, pointing out the powerful symbolisation of how Pakistanis have distorted the very meaning of "independence" and "freedom" to exclusively apply to one gender at the expense of another. Media and feminists also questioned and expressed outrage over harassing behaviour against women in another seven cases in and around Lahore since the Minar-e-Pakistan incident, including the harassment of a women traveling by rickshaw in Lahore on pre-Independence Day evening; a man removing his pants to taunt a woman in another, and the trolling of Pakistani actress Mehwish Hayat's Independence Day message by discussing the colour of her bra beneath her traditional Kurta top. Journalist Anmol Irfan reflected on the irony that most media interviews of the victims were by male journalists who don't face the same kinds of threats, but female journalists who understand the risks of violence against women in public spaces must always consider their reporting and on-the-job safety.

Fake news debate

Pakistan's Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said that harassment with a TikToker at Minar-e-Pakistan and Noor Mukadam's murder were used by Indian media to malign Pakistan and give an impression that Pakistan is unsafe for women.

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Reactions

Amnesty International's statement said that the daytime attack, in a public place, on a woman on 14 August is alarming. In these times when Pakistan is struggling with violent crimes like the murders of Noor Mukadam and Qurat ul Ain, this event heightens fears even more. As per Deutsche Welle's report, victim blaming towards women in Pakistan is not surprising at all and the situation is not likely to change any time soon.

Celebrity reactions

Many celebrities took to social media to express outrage and ask the higher-ups to serve justice to the victim with some left completely stunned over the audacity of the perpetrators. Pakistani religiously conservative scriptwriter Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar said he concedes that a woman's honour and dignity is not secure in Pakistan, he does not know to whom to blame and he is attempting to "understand the psychological level and state of mind of the 400 men around there..." Mahira Khan said she couldn't believe what she saw, and asked for making an example out of oppressive men. In her next tweet she pointed out victim blaming in Pakistan saying, "..Damn, I'm sorry, I keep forgetting – it was HER fault! Poor 400 men, they couldn't help it..." Yashma Gill said the case cannot be any thing else than a harassment case, presumption otherwise for the victim to have planted 400 men is unbelievable. Gill further said that "even if one considers that the victim to have supposedly planted three or four men, and the rest of the men just followed the first ones, then of course, she planted them, but in that case did not those men have free will? They had the power to choose right from wrong, and still they chose wrong. So those men need to be blamed as well. One can not keep victim-blaming only."

• Actor Mansha Pasha said "What they will say: Pakistan is an Islamic Republic and Madina ki riyasat. What is the reality: Woman molested by 400 men at Minare Pakistan on Independence Day during Azaan. We preach religion and patriotism here but we follow hedionism and barbarism."
• Vlogger Shaheer Jaffery commented on the incident through a series of Tweets saying "The truth is, it doesn't matter what the educated Twitter class thinks or says. The majority of people are just trolls and would see what happened as 'just'!" Jaffery says he believes Pakistanis would defend their sisters and daughters to the point that they would lay down their lives for them. At the same time, some random girl passing by is considered an opportunity to harass. He expresses that there is a disconnect with feeling empathy for another human. Jaffery goes on to say that once at a mall in Pakistan he and his friends were not allowed for not being with female family members and he understood men were considered a threat to Pakistani women in earlier times and they still remain a threat. Jaffery also added "...The girl screams for help as she's groped by hundreds of men. There is Azaan going on in the background. I'm finding it hard to wrap my head around that scenario.."
• Pakistani comedian Ali Gul Pir said that "If we accept [their theory] that she went for a TikTok meeting,...what those 400 men did was wrong, was a crime and was horrible."

Political reactions

• The President of Pakistan, Dr Arif Alvi, said it was regretful that people opted to film the harassment at the Minar-e-Pakistan incident instead of forbidding the wrongdoers. He also said it is equally essential to teach the society on proper ethics and its responsibilities to each other. He went on to say, "The whole society needs to learn to provide women the space which is needed for security"
• Vice President Maryam Nawaz said, "Heart-wrenching scenes at Minar-e-Pakistan warrant collective introspection. We as parents, teachers and leaders need to reflect upon the upbringing of our youngsters to make public spaces safe for women. Those involved must be dragged to justice to create a deterrence for the future."
• Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was "ashamed and pained" by the assault on a female TikToker by hundreds of men near Minar-e-Pakistan. He referred to the lack of proper upbringing of the youth and children's greater exposure to things because of mobile phones. He called for the need to teach children the Seerat-un-Nabi — biographies of Muhammad. Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazarisaid that as laws do exist, the effective implementation of those laws would certainly prove to be a deterrent, but mindsets need to change too.
• The Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly, Shehbaz Sharif, stated, "..What is more worrying is the direction our society is headed in. The recent anti-women incidents are a reminder that malaise is deep-rooted. Very shameful!"
• PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said, "..The assault of a young woman by a mob at #minarepakistan should shame every Pakistani. It speaks to a rot in our society,.."

Feminist reactions

• Karachi-based lawyer and human rights activist Jibran Nasir expressed concerns about the widespread victim-blaming on social media by blaming the actions of the hundreds of men on the woman they assaulted. He said, "..Why are crimes committed against a man seen as an exception despite his own conduct but crimes against a woman [are] considered a natural outcome of her actions?"
• Some conservatives took the opportunity to, again, criticise the slogan Mera. Jism, Meri Marzi. Where as many feminists media columns such as Soha Nisar claimed continued headlines like the Minar-e-Pakistan incident showed that women are still being objectified and patriarchal gender is still far from understanding the true essence of women. Until and unless women take ownership of their bodies, they will never be liberated from the control of men hence the slogan Mera. Jism, Meri Marzi becomes much more pertinent.
• Maria Amir summarised that men need not have the right to determine whether a woman should be allowed to live, whether she is allowed to go to school, to whom she marries and when, whether she can be allowed to drive or wear colorful clothes or laugh openly. Women's existence and freedoms ought not be dependent on whether the men in their lives, in Pakistani society or in Pakistan government, allow it." In accordance with their current thoughts, men who violate the jism (woman's body) are not a problem. Men have absolute marzi (choice & decision making) over a woman's jism, but it is the women marching and protesting about Mera Jism, Meri Marzi that are presumed to be the real problem. If women had autonomy over their own bodies that could change the entire system structured on male ownership over women's bodies. That is the reason, the Mera Jism, Meri Marzi slogan is so vital for women's emancipation — the very idea of women taking ownership over their own bodies takes control away from men and that is what women must do.

Protests

Prominent organisations like supporters of Aurat March, Tehreek-e-Niswan, Aurat Foundation, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Women Action Forum, War Against Rape and Sindh Commission of the Status of Women took part in protests in Karachi and Lahore.

Impact and legacy

The delayed police response lead to suspensions and transfers of some of the concerned police officials in Lahore. According to DIG Investigator Shariq Jamal Khan, a 300 percent rise in registration of sexual assault cases can be observed in Lahore within one and a half months of the Minar-e-Pakistan mass assault case. Jamal Khan said that sexual assaults more commonly happened in Lahore prior to the Minar-e-Pakistan incident but it seemed to have inspired women to come forward and register First Information Reports against crimes more confidently. At the end of 2021, media in Pakistan, namely Dawn, The News International, Geo TV and Aaj TV, counted the Minar-e-Pakistan incident of August 14 as one of the most talked about incidents of assault against women in Pakistan.

See also

• Violence against women in Pakistan
• Mass sexual assault
• Mera Jism Meri Marzi
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