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CPI Introduction

The following below is an account of public flogging under an Islamic system in Pakistan. It is an eyewitness’s description which should provide pause for those who want to see Islamic norms prevail in our judicial system.

However, it should be noted that even under our present British-derived justice system, flogging or ‘judicial caning’ as it is sometimes kindly described, is also widely practiced in Malaysia though it is done in the privacy of the prison compound rather than in public as is the Islamic practice.

Although the number of judicial canings is not known, it is believed to run into the thousands and is especially inflicted on what are deemed to be serious offenders such as drugs traffickers and offenders of unnatural sex crimes, e.g. sodomy.

According to one study, “to these severe canings for serious offences have been added, in recent years in … Malaysia, a very large number of much less severe canings of illegal immigrants.” (see “Judicial Caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei” by World Corporate Punishment Research)

The rising trend of canings has been fuelled in part by politicians and the media who see this as a way to deter crime and anti-social behaviour and to gain public popularity.

These canings whether under an Islamic or secular legal system are a severe and barbaric form of punishment.

Despite the efforts of civil society organizations and bodies such as the Bar Council and Amnesty International, they remain in widespread use in the country and are a blot on our collective sense of humanity and decency.

CPI urges its readership to lend their support to the campaign to legislate this brutal and uncivilized form of punishment out of our books – whether secular or Islamic.

Readers who are in two minds may change their views after reading the account below as well as viewing this link to a video (here) of the actual flogging of a drug trafficker in Malaysia some years ago. Readers are warned that this video is not to be viewed by the faint hearted.

Pakistan: Public flogging c.1980 eyewitness account

Extract from Fifteen Lashes by Anwar Iqbal

Published in GRANTA 63, London, Autumn 1998

Soon after he took over, the general [General Zia ul-Haq, who came to power in a military coup in 1977] arranged a big public flogging-show and I, as a reporter, was sent to watch. The victims were lined up in white pyjamas, loose white shirts and white caps. They looked like circus animals waiting for the crack of the trainer's whip. All were men, most of them middle-aged. They looked pale, and they shook with fear. Some even wet their trousers when the flogging began, but it had little effect on their captors or the doctor whose job it was to examine each victim and declare him fit to be flogged.

The stage was built in a big open space between the old city of Rawalpindi and the new capital Islamabad; the two places adjoin each other. Normally, children played football, cricket and hockey there. It was an open platform, about fifteen feet high, and could be viewed from every corner of the huge ground. A wooden frame was fixed in the middle of the platform where every victim was to be tied, his hands and feet separately as on a cross. His face would be turned towards the stage where the policemen, the magistrate, and other important people were sitting; the press had special seats so that they could watch the flogging closely and report every detail. His hips, which would receive the whip, were to face the audience. A microphone was fixed on the frame, near where the victim's mouth was to be, so that everybody could hear him scream.

Centre stage stood a tall and well-built man wearing only a loincloth. He was rubbing oil all over his body. Then he did some push-ups to show his muscles. When he finished, he picked up a big stick, soaked in oil, from a corner where about half a dozen such sticks were kept for him to choose from. He picked one and tried it in the air. The whip made a horrible hissing noise every time he cut the air with it. The whipper, who was a convict himself, had been brought specially from the prison to perform the job, which earned him privileges inside. He received superior food and spent most of his time exercising. He was in great demand and toured Pakistan from city to city to flog whenever the government thought it needed to scare people. He looked very intimidating. He was now ready to flog. All his muscles tightened and bulged like the feathers of a rooster ready to fight.

As those on the stage prepared for the flogging, thousands of people had already gathered to watch it. The ground was full to capacity. So were the neighbouring roads and side streets. There were people on the rooftops of nearby buildings. Some even clung to the trees and electricity poles around the ground. The poor watched with a cautious nonchalance; they have learned not to appear too interested in such things because they tend to supply the victims whenever their rulers need to demonstrate their strength.

The rich behaved differently. They had come by car and on their motorbikes and were cruising around, waiting for the spectacle to begin. The young among them were dressed in tight jeans and bright shirts and some of them had brought their girlfriends with them. Some might have committed the same sin for which the fifteen victims were to be flogged: drinking alcohol and having sex with women other than their wives. But they did not seem bothered. They were safe in doing whatever they did because they belonged to the so-called 'VIP' class where no law, religious or secular, applies.

They also had better, safer places in which to drink or screw and did not have to frequent cheap hotels which the police would raid whenever their bosses felt the need to impress the public with activity. All the victims were arrested from a hotel in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood of the old city. The raiding party, so it was said, had found more than fifty people drinking alcohol and having sex. All of them were convicted in a trial completed in three days. Most of them were over fifty and so found unfit for flogging. The women involved in this crime were also convicted but were spared the whip. Those men found fit were brought for flogging.

Now the flogging was to start. The man with the stick indicated that he was ready. An official came on to the stage, detached the microphone from the wooden frame and announced the name of the first man who was to be whipped. He then read out the allegations against him and signalled the guards to bring him on to the platform. Two constables brought the convict on to the stage. He looked utterly helpless. He was not trembling. He did not even look afraid. He looked more like an animal about to be slaughtered and unable to understand what was happening to him. He could not follow verbal commands. So to make him move, one of the constables had to give him a little push. He moved, and then kept walking so that he would have fallen off the opposite end of the stage if the other constable had not stopped him. It was as if his mind had stopped functioning. There seemed to be no coordination between his thoughts and his actions. Each of his hands and feet appeared to be moving separately. The constables led him to the frame. Then the doctor came, examined him, listened to his heart with a stethoscope, and declared him fit for flogging. The man listened to the pronouncement with indifference, as if it did not concern him. He even nodded his head twice, as if endorsing the doctor's decision.

By now the crowd was completely silent. Even the hawkers, selling ice cream and fresh fruits to the crowd, were quiet. The constables lifted the man up on to the frame, and tied his hands and feet to the scaffolding: his face was turned towards the stage and his buttocks exposed to the crowd. They tied another piece of cloth above his hips to mark the target. Then they moved aside. Now all eyes were fixed on the whip-man who was fiercely slashing the air with his whip. The crowd was so quiet that the microphone picked up the slashing of the whip and carried it everywhere. The man on the scaffolding also heard the sound. So far he had been very quiet but the slashing sound changed him. He started trembling and then cried, very loudly. The loudspeakers carried his voice to the crowd and beyond, but nobody spoke a word.

Now a magistrate, also sitting on the stage, asked the whip-man to begin. He tested the whip for the last time, slowly hitting his left palm, and then came running, stopped a foot or two from the scaffolding and hit the victim with full force. The whip touched his skin, went into his flesh and came out again. The man shrieked in agony. Those sitting on the stage could see blood oozing from the wound. One, said the official counting the whips. The man was sobbing now which could be heard on the loudspeakers.

The whipper went back to his mark and came running again when the magistrate signalled him to resume. The whip hit the flesh, the man shouted for help, the flogger withdrew, came back again, hit him and withdrew. Once this sequence was broken when the doctor came to examine the victim. After his examination, he invited the whip-man to continue. The constable untied the man after the fifteenth lash and he fell on to the stage. They removed him on a stretcher and brought the next man.

This was my first public flogging. Several months later I went to a maidan, a public space, in Rawalpindi where a blind woman was to be flogged for sexual misbehaviour. An audience of hundreds of men surrounded the stage where she was to he whipped. They displayed neither sorrow nor passion. They chatted about politics and sport as they waited for the flogging to begin.

Then a police officer came and asked them to go home because a higher court had suspended the flogging. Soon the maidan rang with voices of disapproval. The men wanted to watch the tamasha, the hullabaloo. They were there to watch the woman's helplessness and to enjoy it. But the policemen were ready with their batons, so they had to disperse. And the truth was that I shared their disappointment. Although I had been writing against public flogging ever since it began, I wanted to watch it. I might go back to my typewriter and condemn it, but I did not want to miss the spectacle.

This was an unpleasant discovery to make about myself. A sorrowful, angry disgust – with myself and the country I lived in – thus became a feature of my life.

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Comments (1)

• 09-12-2012 | fauzi

  TK to CPI for highlighting this. Us Muslims especially need to reexamine our religious values, rules and system if we want to argue that we have a progressive and humane religion.

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