I n a victory for human rights, Pakistan's Supreme Court has suspended the acquittals of men accused of gang-raping a villager. The victim has become an international cause celebre for her refusal to accept humiliation by her attackers and Pakistan's legal system. Those who dare claim that such behavior should be tolerated out of respect for cultural differences deserve nothing but derision. No woman should be treated this way.
The case of Ms. Mukhtar Mai is a sad one. In June 2002, she was gang-raped by eight men. The attack was ordered by the council of village elders, the real power in many villages in rural Pakistan. The brutalities against Ms. Mai were allegedly authorized as punishment for her 12-year-old brother's alleged affair with a woman who was from a higher-caste family or, according to other stories, from a rival clan known as the Mastoi. One of the rapists was a member of the woman's family.
The Mai family maintains that the charge against Ms. Mai's brother was fabricated after the boy was sodomized by men from the Mastoi clan and the family threatened to report the matter to police. Three men were eventually tried for that crime and sentenced to five-year prison terms.