Welcome to 2007...In Pakistan

[fttickler]

Pakistan Girl Was to Be Poker Debt Bride
Tue Feb 27, 9:28 AM


KARACHI, Pakistan - Police are seeking 10 men, including several tribal elders, accused of pressuring a Pakistani woman to hand over her teenage daughter as payment for a 16-year-old poker debt, officials said Tuesday.

In the latest case highlighting how conservative customs threaten women's rights in Pakistan, Nooran Umrani alleges that, despite paying off her late husband's debt of $165, she was threatened with harm if she failed to hand over her daughter, Rasheeda.

The 17-year-old was to be surrendered as a bride for the son of Lal Haider, the man who won the card game years before, Umrani told reporters on Monday in Hyderabad, 100 miles northeast of Karachi.

Umrani said her husband was a gambler who ran up the debt at a poker game when Rasheeda was 1 year old. He promised Haider that he would get Rasheeda in lieu of payment when she grew up, the mother said.

Koral Shah, a Hyderabad police officer, said both families belong to the Umrani tribe of Pakistan's impoverished Baluchistan province.

He said a group of elders from the tribe came to Hyderabad in January to investigate the case and had ruled that, under tribal custom, the girl should be married to Haider's 23-year-old son Abdul Ghani.

Police want to arrest the elders, he said.

Police said Tuesday the mother and daughter were in their protection and that an investigation was opened against Haider, his son and eight others.

"We are investigating the matter and vigorously searching" for the men, Hyderabad police chief Irfan Bhutto said.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has vowed to give women more rights in line with his policy to project Pakistan as a moderate, progressive Islamic nation.

In December, Musharraf signed into law a bill that makes it easier to prosecute rape cases in the courts, and the country's ruling party recently introduced a bill to outlaw forced marriages, including under tribal custom in which women are married off in order to settle disputes.

[milagros317]

Were you surprised to read an example of women being treated as property in that culture? I wasn't.

[bugman]

And some people still think compromise is possible with people who are still living in the 13th century.....

[InspectorJapp]

And some people still think compromise is possible with people who are still living in the 13th century.....
During that Muhammed-drawing trouble a while ago, an Israel-correspondent with a norwegian TV-station did a streetsegment, and one of the persons he talked to was an elderly jewish lady who made an interesting comment: "You see what they are doing? And yet you tell us to talk to them. To reason with them.
Go on then; Reason with them!"

[maniactickler]

Damn, id play poker a helluva lot more if we were playing for hot babes. :eek:

[MrMacphisto]

And some people still think compromise is possible with people who are still living in the 13th century.....

On the one hand, Pakistan has a very unstable system and an oppressive culture.

On the other hand, we live in a culture being manipulated by corporate interests like the military industrial complex.

Somewhere in between, there lies a happy medium -- like in Canada.

[bugman]

Given the choice between a socialist country like Canada and the U.S. i would rather be here,although we need serious changes in the way we do things here.

[InspectorJapp]

a socialist country like Canada
How is Canada socialist?

[nowayjose]

How is Canada socialist?

It's got a national healthcare system that provides healthcare even to the poor and unemployed -- pure evil communism and most likely against the Bible aswell.

[bugman]

The Bible has nothing to do with my opinion.In Europe and Canada,the states for the most part to not own everything as a communist state would.They do,however attempt to act as a nanny state.

I believe in as much individual freedom and as little government interference in peoples lives as possible.With such freedom comes the responsibilty to provide for ones self.I am not against a safety net for those who cannot do so,but a welfare state provides little motavation for someone to attempt to improve their lot in life.

I have,in the past dealt with families that were on welfare for generations,which served no one well,least of all the people being provided a subsistence standard of living at the public charge.

[InspectorJapp]

As someone who lives in a country where a socialist party (SV) actually has about 5-8%, I would like to point out that there is a huge difference between socialdemocrats/christiandemocrats and socialists.
A socialdemocrat believes in interaction between state and business, and while they sometimes goes overboard with the nannying, for the most part it works reasonably well.
Socialists on the other hand, wants to nationalize pretty much everything in that remotely sounds like big business. They tend to distrust the motives of enterprising people, and make it very difficult to exist. Luckily, most people (in my country at least) see them as a noveltyact more than a serious party. They are in goverment now (a majority coalition with Labour and the Centrists) and their ridiculous ideas continue to get hammered down, much to the dismay to the oldtimers in the party, and to the unbridled snickering of the rest of us...

[Redmage]

And some people still think compromise is possible with people who are still living in the 13th century.....The century they're living in has little to do with their ability to negotiate. We made numerous treaties with American Indians, who were several centuries behind us technologically (we broke them all, of course, but that wasn't their fault).

More to the point, though, I don't know of anyone who is advocating "compromise" with Muslim extremists. I know many who are pointing out that we call them "extremists" because they aren't typical, and many others who suggest we should leave them to kill one another as long as they're happy doing that.

[MrMacphisto]

The Bible has nothing to do with my opinion.In Europe and Canada,the states for the most part to not own everything as a communist state would.They do,however attempt to act as a nanny state.

I believe in as much individual freedom and as little government interference in peoples lives as possible.With such freedom comes the responsibilty to provide for ones self.I am not against a safety net for those who cannot do so,but a welfare state provides little motavation for someone to attempt to improve their lot in life.

I have,in the past dealt with families that were on welfare for generations,which served no one well,least of all the people being provided a subsistence standard of living at the public charge.

I hear ya... I used to be Libertarian, but I now favor certain socialistic programs because I just don't trust the private sector in most cases. You'd think they would save us money, but in the long run, it seems like big business rapes us even more than the government. At least the government is somewhat subject to its people.... Corporations practically get carte blanche in this country.