Mukhtar Mai aka Mukhtaran Bibi is now writing her own Internet diary about her life and her concerns, as an uneducated woman from a remote village.
LAHORE: Mukhtar Mai aka Mukhtaran Bibi, who was gang raped in an act of punishment sanctioned by her village elders in Pakistani Punjab in February 2002 because her younger brother was seen with a woman from another tribe, has done it again. She is now writing her own internet diary about her life and her concerns, as an uneducated woman from a remote village.
At 34, Mai — an uneducated woman who should never have left her village, much less become an icon feted everywhere — is frequently compared to Rosa Parks and Gandhi.
Expected to commit suicide in shame after being gangraped, Mukhtar pursued a criminal and civil case, won a judgment, and used the money to open a school to educate the poor children of her area. Illiterate herself, Mukhtar is a student in her own school — as are the children of those accused of raping her. The school is the first step to change the world. "I didn't want to spend it on myself", she says of the $10,000 payment she had received by a foreign NGO.
"Education will play a very, very important role in changing the minds of men", she says. So she built the Mukhtar Mai School for Girls and the Farid Gujjar School for Boys, named after her father. Two years later, Mukhtar Mai, was once an anonymous Pakistani villager, has now started contributing a weekly diary or weblog to the site of the BBC Urdu Service. "Mostly I talk about incidents which are cruel and painful," she says.
Her blog is unique in the sense that she can hardly read or write herself. Yet she tells her stories to a local BBC journalist, who types it up as a web diary.
Her internet diaries provide an insight not only into the crimes committed by men against rural women, but also the hardships of their daily lives. "I don't think that the people in our village know what it's all about and what I am writing. But I have received a few e-mails from other places — people who have reading my blog on line and who encourage me to continue."
Subsequently, scores of emails have flooded into the BBC Urdu site, in response to her diary. Mostly they are from men and mostly they have been encouraging.
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