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Aurat March Karachi, the feminist movement behind the annual Women’s Day march, demanded Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz apologise or resign from her post after her comments about the alleged rape of a Lahore student.

The organisation expressed outrage at Maryam’s “vile and regressive language”, and said it believed the CM was “unfit to represent the public while disregarding the safety, rights, and dignity of survivors of sexual violence.”

During a press conference on Wednesday, Maryam dismissed “rumours spread on social media” related to the alleged on-campus rape of the student, terming it a “fabricated story”.

The chief minister said an issue was made out of an incident that “never existed in the first place”. Referring to a young woman believed to be the victim, she said, “This girl is completely paak saaf (chaste), there are false allegations being levelled against her”.

“I am not only a CM but I also represent women — this is my red line,” Maryam said. “If a rape had happened, I would have acted before anyone said anything.”

According to the Aurat March, the chief minister’s statement about the girl’s purity and the allegations against her “reinforces the patriarchal belief that women’s worth is tied to the supposed ‘purity’ that comes with them being sexually untouched”. They added that the rhetoric was even more misogynistic when referring to rape.

The organisation questioned if victim-survivors of rape are “somehow impure and clean”, stating that they were “over 21,900 cases of rape have been reported in Pakistan from 2017 to 2021, with many more going unreported due to fear, shame, and stigma.

Aurat March claimed that the chief minister’s words made it more difficult for survivors to seek justice and fuelled a culture of victim-blaming that “protects rapists and vilifies those they brutalise”.

They said that framing the alleged rape as something the girl was wrongfully accused of implied that in incidents of rape, the blame of the accusation lay on the victim rather than the perpetrator.

“As if this wasn’t enough, she also claimed that allegations like these are meant to damage the reputation and ‘izzat’ (honour) of the victim-survivor’s family. Last we checked, the only person who loses their honour in the crime of rape is the rapist.”

They questioned how formally educated people in the 21st century, especially a woman in the case of the chief minister, were furthering “age-old rape apologist narratives”.

“Public officials should never echo the same repulsive justifications used by rapists and murderers in the name of ‘honour’. This is not just reckless; it’s a betrayal of every woman who has fought for her right to be treated as a human being.”

The organisation clarified that it believed in calling out misogynistic and patriarchal mindsets everywhere, regardless of an individual’s political affiliation.

The incident

Last week, news related to the alleged rape of the student went viral on social media, prompting the police to arrest a security guard at the college who was allegedly involved in the incident.

Enraged by the alleged incident, students mobilised on social media and staged protests outside different colleges in the city. During one of the protests, clashes broke out between the protesters and the security team of a college. Later on, police and students confronted each other, leaving 28 injured.