On the day she appeared in courtroom for the primary time in her life, Leena Ghani discovered it troublesome to not squirm in entrance of the decide. She realised inside 5 minutes that the cushioned seat she was on was infested with bedbugs. You could possibly sit proper on the sting of your seat and hope to be spared, or, as she exhibits me on the day I accompany her to Karachi’s metropolis courtroom in February, you give it an excellent thump. That was her second lesson. The primary: she was dressed solely inappropriately at that look, in a cushty Stranger Issues sweatshirt and denims, her nails painted black. On the day we meet, she wears garments borrowed from her mom – a white cotton kurta with sleeves lengthy sufficient to cowl the fragile stars inked on her wrist, free white cotton trousers that nearly disguise the kite tattooed in flight on one ankle, and a gray scarf to cowl her head out of respect for the feminine decide she is going to seem earlier than. She finds a technique to signify herself although – her white khussas are hand-painted with a map on one shoe and the road ‘Oh, the locations you’ll go!’ on the opposite.
Over the previous yr, Ghani, an artist and activist, has come to relish these courtroom dates, however at first, she was intimidated. Now she doesn’t stare on the convicts with chains hanging from their wrists ready for his or her flip within the dock, and she or he walks with out pause via a scrum of legal professionals gleefully watching a person and lady shout at and abuse one another exterior the courtroom room. She cuts an uncommon determine. The ladies we see round us have frightened faces, they’re right here to request a decide grant a divorce, persuade their husbands to return their dowries, plead for custody of their youngsters. Not like them, since 2018, Ghani is each accused and accuser.
On April 19, 2018, the singer and actress Meesha Shafi tweeted a be aware accusing a fellow singer and actor Ali Zafar of “sexual harassment of a bodily nature…” It was the primary large allegation of this type in Pakistan after the #MeToo motion had kicked off the earlier yr. Each artists are stars in Pakistan, and whereas Shafi had made her Hollywood debut in Mira Nair’s ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’ reverse Riz Ahmed, Zafar was forging a profession in Bollywood. Shafi and Zafar had been buddies and carried out collectively for a few years, with Shafi even doing a small cameo in a music video for a track off Zafar’s first album in 2003. “I do know I’m not alone,” she wrote in her tweet. Zafar responded with a denial and mentioned he would “take this via the courts… to deal with this professionally and critically moderately than to lodge any allegations right here, contesting private vendettas on social media and in flip disrespecting the (#MeToo) motion…”
A couple of hours later, there was a second accusation, additionally from a pal of Zafar’s. “Within the a few years I’ve identified Ali,” wrote Leena Ghani on Twitter, “he has on a number of events crossed boundaries of what’s applicable behaviour between buddies.” She known as out “inappropriate contact, groping, sexual feedback…” and added, “The reminiscences of the occasions the place Ali thought he might get away by saying vulgar issues to me nonetheless disgusts me.” Zafar has denied the “false and malicious statements”, and in a note tweeted by his authorized staff, said that Ghani’s allegations got here “as no shock” as she had labored with Shafi prior to now, and knew considered one of Shafi’s legal professionals, Nighat Dad, via her activism. Her allegations had been a part of a “malicious agenda” to help Shafi and goal Zafar, his staff implied.
It’s a stance that Zafar and his legal professionals have continued to claim since. Just lately, considered one of Zafar’s legal professionals, Hasham Ahmad, defined why they really feel Ghani’s statements “don’t make sense”. His feedback supply a revealing have a look at frequent rebuttals to allegations of harassment or abuse. “If you happen to’re an activist, as Ghani says she is, you need to elevate girls’s voices. Why would you keep quiet if one thing occurred to you? Why wouldn’t you converse up?” he mentioned. “Why would you retain assembly the one that allegedly harassed you or be current on social events the place you’ll meet them? And then you definitely get up one fantastic morning and say, ‘This occurred to me a few years in the past’?” He refers back to the a long time of abuse by Harvey Weinstein, and says, “I perceive why you’ll keep quiet if the individual you’re accusing is your boss or can spoil your profession, or if, as within the case of Weinstein’s victims, you’re a newcomer in an trade and your alleged harasser can impression your profession. However these girls are privileged… they’re all established of their respective fields. They declare that when the alleged harassment passed off, they had been shocked and knew one thing was improper. So why didn’t they converse up on the time?”
Ghani has stated in courtroom that in June 2014, the primary time that Zafar allegedly behaved inappropriately together with her was at a style present the place his spouse, buddies, and Ghani’s sister was current, and she or he was “horrified, felt objectified and utterly shocked” and informed her sister and buddies concerning the incident. She said that after the third alleged incident of inappropriate behaviour throughout the span of per week, she refused a proposal to work with Zafar in July 2014. She remained buddies with Zafar’s spouse, Ayesha, however minimize all ties with him by December 2016. Nonetheless, Ahmad factors to this friendship and argues, “If you happen to don’t react to one thing, how would somebody know should you’re permitting it or not? You need to present out of your conduct that you just dislike a sure gesture. If you happen to transfer on, or stay buddies, then you definitely’re exhibiting that you just’re fantastic with it.” By advantage of their friendship, Zafar’s lawyer asserts, Ghani ought to have corrected any alleged inappropriate behaviour instantly. “Generally buddies go overboard,” he says. “Now, we aren’t children. There’s a technique to inform somebody, ‘You higher behave’. If one thing did occur, why not go to your pal and simply say, ‘Perhaps you aren’t realising it, however what you probably did or mentioned went overboard. Please watch out.’”
Weaponising the legislation towards victims
In June 2018, Zafar sued Shafi for defamation, asking for Rs 1 billion (roughly $6.3 million) in damages. Her tweet, his lawsuit said was a “nicely thought out conspiracy” towards him and had induced him monetary injury and emotional struggling. In November, Zafar filed a criticism with the Federal Investigation Company’s (FIA) cybercrime wing towards social media accounts posting “threats and defamatory materials”. A few of the accounts had expressed help for Shafi, whereas others alleged that they had been harassed or witnessed harassment by Zafar – journalist Maham Javaid claimed he had “tried to kiss my cousin and pull my cousin right into a restroom” and blogger Hamna Raza mentioned Zafar had allegedly groped her when she took {a photograph} with him at an occasion. Zafar mentioned lots of the social media accounts had been pretend, linked to or adopted by Shafi. “The plan was for one lady to come back ahead, then one other, as they’re attempting to make me out to be Pakistan’s Harvey Weinstein,” he mentioned in a tv interview. “I need to show in courtroom how (Shafi) has lied, in order that tomorrow no lady can smash the lifetime of any man, any household, any lady, or a baby, and nobody ought to have the ability to exploit women and men who’re precise victims of sexual harassment or those that battle for them. That’s my mission.” By January 2019, Shafi was positioned beneath a gag order. In January, the Supreme Court docket admitted Shafi’s attraction towards the dismissal of her harassment case, after the Lahore Excessive Court docket dominated that it didn’t fall throughout the ambit of current legal guidelines towards office harassment.
In August 2020, Zafar was honoured with the Pleasure of Efficiency award by the federal government. The award was criticised by many activists, who cited the allegations towards Zafar. In September 2020, the FIA booked Shafi and eight others, together with Ghani, Raza and Javaid beneath the Prevention of Digital Crimes Act 2016 (PECA). If discovered responsible of sharing info that’s “false… intimidates or harms the status or privateness” of an individual, they face three years in jail and/or as much as Rs 1 million in fines. PECA was handed in 2016 at the same time as some activists and a few political leaders warned that it was flawed.
Digital rights activist and lawyer Nighat Dad campaigned towards PECA, arguing that the legislation could be “weaponised” towards victims, and she or he says the case towards Ghani and others is an indication. “Using the legislation on this approach is chilling,” she says. “It’s not simply concerning the witnesses on this case. This units a precedent for different girls – a warning that in the event that they converse up, they are often punished on this approach by their alleged harassers.” Days after the FIA’s legal report, Raza, the blogger, retracted her allegations and apologised to Zafar. Her title was dropped from the case.
Ghani was shocked by this use of cybercrime legal guidelines. When she accused Zafar, she remembers that she might have had only some hundred followers on Twitter. Not like Shafi, she was comparatively unknown exterior of the style and leisure trade the place she briefly labored as a make-up artist. Some responded to her tweet to ask, “However who’re you?” She didn’t stay unknown for lengthy. Her {photograph} was shared in non-public Fb teams and used for memes claiming she “enjoyed rape” and males uploaded movies describing how they might rape and beat her to show her a lesson. She blocked the accounts, however others popped up with a stream of movies of abuse and threats, some set to peppy music, which might be troublesome to look at. She says she complained to the FIA however didn’t hear again from them and no motion was taken towards the accounts or Fb teams. Al Jazeera reached out to the FIA for touch upon this however obtained no response.
Final yr, Ghani says she visited the FIA’s department in Lahore to answer claims of defaming Zafar. The workplace was in an previous home in Lahore that had been repurposed for the company. She entered via the kitchen and located a room with stacks of recordsdata and a person sitting behind a desk in his slippers. She performed a video of threats she had obtained on Twitter for the official, turning the amount on her cellphone up. The names she had been known as echoed via the room: prostitute, bitch, liar, whore.
“Flip this off,” Ghani says he snapped at her, uncomfortable and embarrassed.
“No,” she replied. “I’ve needed to hearken to this, and now so must you.”
“That was very troublesome to come back to phrases with,” she remembers. “It hit me then that even this man in his messy workplace has a lot energy, he has different males standing behind him and a state establishment to again him up. And who do I’ve to again me up?”
‘Sneakers of iron, arms of gold’
Ghani has needed to take care of criticism that the harassment she allegedly suffered wasn’t “that dangerous”. “Our society is used to victims who’re helpless girls, these with scars on their physique, these barely in a position to fend for themselves,” she feels. “However a lady like me? Who solely needed to take care of inappropriate phrases or an undesirable contact? They are saying, ‘That’s it? That’s such a small factor.’ Individuals need ugly violence as that’s seen as the one cause to come back ahead and say you’re a sufferer.” When Iffat Omar, an actress additionally accused of maligning Zafar via her help for Meesha Shafi, appeared in courtroom, she was trailed by a crowd of younger women and men chanting, “We help Ali Zafar” and “Cease mendacity”.
In January this yr, Ghani determined to behave. “Is it truthful that we could be harassed, maligned and labelled as liars once we converse up?” she tweeted. “I’ve moved the courtroom to cease Mr Zafar and his military of trolls from harassing me additional.” She was suing Zafar for Rs 500 million (greater than $3.1 million) in damages. In her lawsuit, she detailed cases when Zafar spoke about her in tv interviews or ‘preferred’ or shared tweets implying she is a liar or opportunist.
It was a wholly surprising flip in a messy authorized drama that had been taking part in out in headlines for 2 years. “It is a very distinctive case,” Dad defined. “To problem a strong one that has been utilizing completely different means to silence those that have spoken towards them is daring. Normally the sufferer is so overwhelmed that they might not need to begin a battle on one other entrance. It’s brave of a lady who’s already going through an try and silence her to battle again on this approach.” In the meantime, Zafar’s authorized staff sees the case for example of ulterior motives. “Do me a favour,” Ahmad mentioned to me. “Kind ‘Leena Ghani’ in Google. See what comes up. What’s her cause for fame? The one cause folks know her title is as a result of she is without doubt one of the folks accusing Ali Zafar.”
One in all Ghani’s legal professionals explains to me that they don’t often see girls utilizing legal guidelines towards defamation, as in contrast with males. “These sorts of instances can drag on for years and it helps to have help from household, to know your authorized rights, and to diligently present the form of proof wanted,” says Bahzad Haider. He quotes an previous Urdu saying to clarify why few girls might take the route Ghani has chosen: “To go to courtroom, you want footwear manufactured from iron and arms manufactured from gold.” You should be ready for an extended, costly slog.
What feels strikingly rapid is the way in which during which these instances have compelled a dialog about our our bodies and the proper to find out how they’re handled. When Ghani shared on Twitter that Zafar allegedly asked her if she was a virgin or touched her her mother and father had been supportive however nervous. “My father requested me why I selected to make use of the phrase ‘groping’, as a result of he felt folks would discover the phrase arduous to swallow and picture the worst,” she remembers. “But when that phrase makes them uncomfortable, think about how girls really feel each time they need to take care of it. I selected to make use of that phrase, to point out how the hazard girls face isn’t simply from strangers, and infrequently harassment begins with the form of gaze that makes you uncomfortable, then it’s verbal, and at last bodily.”
In Pakistan, any try to start such a dialogue has been met with resistance: final yr, when the slogan “mera jism, meri marzi” (“my physique, my selection”) was known as out forward of the annual march on Worldwide Ladies’s Day, it was met with fury – what sort of lady would name consideration to her physique or assert her proper to decide on what she does with it in public? Petitions had been filed in courtroom towards the “vulgar”, “un-Islamic” marchers, Amnesty Worldwide denounced the “threats of violence, intimidation and harassment” to the organisers, girls marching within the capital, Islamabad, had been pelted with stones and footwear, and a well-known tv author was so upset throughout an interview on a chat present when he heard an activist utter the slogan that he known as her a “bitch” who no man would even “spit on”.
‘The pandemic of patriarchy’
Ghani is aware of this anger is just not new – it has solely been freshly kindled. At Lahore’s Nationwide School of Arts (NCA), she studied beneath the girl she calls her first feminist icon, the artist Lala Rukh, one of many founders of the Ladies’s Motion Discussion board (WAF) in 1981, an organisation fashioned to protest towards and counter the vehemently anti-women laws handed beneath the navy dictatorship of Basic Zia-ul-Haq. Lala Rukh witnessed the sluggish creep of management over girls’s our bodies via the microcosm of the campuses the place she studied and later taught. When she was on the Punjab College within the Nineteen Sixties, nude portray with dwell fashions (segregated for female and male college students) was provided to MA college students, however some years later, college students from the Division of Islamic Research would storm into the Division of Superb Arts and smash sculptures of the human type.
By the mid-Nineteen Seventies, Basic Zia had issued orders to the state tv that every one feminine anchors ought to have their heads coated with a dupatta.
When the ladies accusing Zafar had been merely youngsters, legal guidelines had been handed that gave the authorized testimony of a Pakistani lady half the load of the testimony of a person – one member of the clergy reasoned that girls had “inferior schools of cause and reminiscence” and their phrase ought to be handled the identical as that of “the blind, handicapped, lunatics and kids”. In an iconic {photograph} from a WAF-organised demonstration towards the legislation in 1983, Lala Rukh stands in a small clutch of girls setting their dupattas on fireplace in protest. They had been overwhelmed, teargassed, and arrested. In video interviews for the Asia Artwork Archive in 2009, Lala Rukh recalled with glee that the protest was mentioned in Parliament with more and more imaginative accusations towards the ladies. The glass bangles on her wrists clink with every effusive gesture, the smoke from her cigarette curls towards her smiling face. “They mentioned… these girls had been tearing up the pavement and utilizing their dupattas as slings. I want we’d considered it!”
When WAF was unable to seek out native printers prepared to print their protest indicators or newsletters, Lala Rukh started designing and display screen printing them herself – one poster, titled Crimes Towards Ladies, a compilation of stories stories of violence towards girls, is now within the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork’s assortment, together with a few of Lala Rukh’s different works. “She was the one individual I knew who wasn’t married, hadn’t had youngsters, and she or he lived a life that was about her artwork, activism, educating, and friendships,” Ghani remembers. “She lived the form of life I didn’t even know I wished.”
In March 2018, Ghani was considered one of many ladies who got here collectively to organise the primary march on Worldwide Ladies’s Day in Lahore, in solidarity with marches in different cities and around the globe. The marches have grown yearly, as has the criticism of them. Final yr, posters and murals for the march had been vandalised in Islamabad and Lahore, the faces of the ladies painted on them blackened and known as obscene. Yearly, the marchers have continued, and this yr, they spray-painted their slogans, together with “my physique, my selection” and “the pandemic of patriarchy”, onto practice bogies in Lahore in glow-in-the-dark paint. The march’s posters jostle for house on metropolis partitions plastered with advertisements for concoctions promising male virility, a stark distinction to the one photographs of girls in such public areas – in commercials for laundry detergent or milk. Her authorized battles, Ghani hopes, are an extension of such activism. “If you happen to occupy the streets, what’s the subsequent step? To occupy the establishments, the courtroom rooms, the state’s areas.”
Ghani desires this case to drive a reckoning of what constitutes hurt. However when a journalist requested her just lately if it felt potently symbolic, she shook her head. “It feels very lonely at occasions,” she says. She has needed to drive herself out of her consolation zone – she describes herself as a “homebody” who most popular Twitter and Fb to share her ideas and her artwork to specific herself. She laughs as she tells me that in school, she was a gifted mime. She liked utilizing her physique to carry out, however was terrified of getting to make use of her voice. She takes the sting out of descriptions of traumatic incidents with jokes, and in courtroom, when she scribbles a be aware to me about feeling frightened, she attracts a smiley face on the finish. She has needed to drive herself to be clear, concise and direct due to this case, studying with every courtroom look or media interview. Nonetheless, when she talks about her childhood, it turns into clear that she might have at all times had an inclination to talk up. As her father was a authorities worker, Ghani and her sisters spent some years in Peshawar, the place he had been posted. Within the sixth grade, college students had been speaking a few swimming pool within the metropolis that you just wanted particular permission to go to. Ghani was irritated. The pool ought to have been open and equally accessible for all, she argued. The next yr, a nun on the convent college she studied at requested the scholars to put in writing down what they wished to be after they grew up. She paused at thirteen-year-old Ghani’s reply. Scribbled on the paper: “I need to develop as much as be a path to goodness.”