ISLAMABAD: An assembly of village elders in Pakistan sentenced Sikander Bhutto to be put to death and fed to dogs after he said he exposed a case of a woman beaten and killed by her husband.
Then the provincial high court stepped in and ordered police protection for Bhutto, a human rights activist.
“They told me to pay 200,000 rupees (2,000 dollar) to them or get ready to be killed,” Bhutto told Reuters, referring to the elders in the village of Ghotki in the southern province of Sindh.
The elders accused Bhutto of having an affair with the woman. Bhutto says she was killed in December for refusing to transfer ownership of her house to her husband.
The case is among a growing number where the judiciary is challenging the centuries-old tradition of quick justice handed down by gatherings of local elders, known as jirgas or panchayats.
These informal gatherings, where a group of local elders hears disputes and rules on them almost immediately, cover most of the country’s 180 million people.
Many people prefer their quick and often rough justice because the formal legal system is cumbersome and corrupt, with cases taking years to be concluded.
In most of the country, jirgas are tolerated but not recognised by the formal courts. Decisions are not legally binding, but are usually enforced by the village.
But in the mountainous tribal regions along the Afghan border, home to millions of Pakistanis, there are no courts and police. Jirgas are the only justice system, and if convened according to the law governing the region, their decisions are legally binding.
Qamaruddin Bohra, head of the Supreme Court’s Human Rights Cell, has sat on a jirga himself. They are fair 95 percent of the time and much better than the courts at enforcing decisions, he said.
“Many times people ignore the ruling of the courts but they cannot ignore the jirgas because that is the decision of their own community,” he said. “If they disobey the jirga they might have to leave their village.” (Reuters)
