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Dishonourable death
Ghazala lived in the Joharabad region of Pakistan's Punjab, a mountainous area of small farms run by tenant farmers. She was just 16, and the chances are she'd never been kissed. But her family noticed the looks she gave her young neighbour - and that was enough.
On 6th January 1999, Ghazala's brother burst into her room and dragged her, screaming, into the dusty street. In front of onlookers he poured kerosene over her and set her alight. The passers-by did nothing to stop the barbaric act; most of them had seen this sort of thing before.
Ghazala didn't die easily, but in slow and unimaginable agony as the flames consumed her. When she finally gave up the fight, her charred and naked body lay in the street for more than two hours before anybody bothered to move it. According to her brother, Ghazala had been having 'illicit relations' with her neighbour and brought dishonour on the whole family. Only her death could restore that honour.
What Ghazala's family did is known in Pakistan as Karo-kari, or 'honour killing'. According to the most conservative estimates of the Human Rights Commission for Pakistan, more than 1,000 women die this way every year. Most human rights campaigners believe the number is much higher.
Women as possessions
Karo-kari has no basis in religion - although it has been encouraged by the rise of fundamentalist Islam - and under Pakistani law is murder. However, it is deeply rooted in Pakistani society and culture, with origins in the old tribal customs of the Baloch and Pashtun ethnic groups.
The basis of Karo-kari is the belief that women are little more than household possessions to be bought or sold, at their males' whim. As the English language newspaper Dawn reported in January this year: 'A woman in Upper Sindh has no individual identity. She is just a chattel. She can be killed on mere suspicion.'
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