The International Herald Tribune
written by AFP staff
Wednesday May 29, 2012
ISLAMABAD: Police on Tuesday arrested a cleric accused of sentencing six people to death for singing and dancing at a wedding in Kohistan.
“Police have arrested a cleric and his companion for issuing the death decree, but they totally denied it,” local administration official Aqal Badshah Khattak told AFP.
“The cleric has said he had no role in the decree and his name was misused,” Khattak said.
Police told AFP on Monday that clerics sentenced four women and two men to death after mobile phone footage emerged of them enjoying themselves at a village wedding in the mountains of Kohistan district, 175 kilometres north of the capital Islamabad.
The men and women had allegedly danced and sung together in Gada village, in defiance of strict tribal customs that separate men and women at weddings.
But on Tuesday, district police chief Abdul Majeed Afridi said it appeared to be a case of tribal rivalry and an attempt to defame a family.
He said the video was recorded three years ago and then edited in an attempt to implicate the party goers.
“I am satisfied that there is no danger to the life of the girls,” he said.
According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year after being accused of defaming their family’s honour.
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The Kuwait Times
written by AFP staff
Monday May 28, 2012
ISLAMABAD: Four women and two men have been sentenced to death in northern Pakistan for singing and dancing at a wedding, police said yesterday. Clerics issued a decree after a mobile phone video emerged of the six enjoying themselves in a remote village in the mountainous district of Kohistan, 176 kilometres (109 miles) north of the capital Islamabad.
Pakistani authorities in the area said local clerics had ordered the punishment over allegations that the men and women danced and sang together in Gada village, in defiance of strict tribal customs that separate men and women at weddings.
“The local clerics issued a decree to kill all four women and two men shown in the video,” district police officer Abdul Majeed Afridi told AFP. “It was decided that the men will be killed first, but they ran away so the women are safe for the moment. I have sent a team to rescue them and am waiting to hear some news,” he said, adding that the women had been confined to their homes.
Afridi said the events stemmed from a dispute between two tribes and that there was no evidence the men and women had been inter-mingling.
“All of them were shown separately in the video. I’ve seen the video taken on a cell phone myself, it shows four women singing and a man dancing in separate scenes and then another man sitting in a separate shot,” he said. “This is tribal enmity. The video has been engineered to defame the tribe,” he added.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honour. The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class citizens.
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