Pakistan Flogging Case Update: Video ‘Faked?’

Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has begun hearings in the capital, Islamabad by a special eight-judge bench into the video showing a 17-year-old girl being flogged by militants.

The girl, Chaand Bibi, failed to appear in court yesterday even though she had been ordered to do so by Chaudhry. In a statement from her village in Swat, Chaand denied that she was the burka-clad woman in the video. Chief Justice Chaudhry ordered government to continue the investigation and report back every two weeks. The Guardian reported that Chaudhry warned the video might have been faked: “In order to unnecessarily malign the people of Swat, who are now demanding for application of Sharia law." Contrary to Western media reports, Swat is not under strict Sharia law, but under a milder legal system referred to as Nizam-al-Adl. Flogging is in violation of the agreement between the government and militant leaders. Religious parties in Pakistan have expressed the same sentiments as Justice Chaudhry, and hundreds of demonstrators in the Swat capital, Mingora, marched to protest the video, claiming it could derail the fragile peace accord between the government and religious groups. Human rights groups and secular parties fear the video is proof of the “Talibanization”of the country, which they see as spreading from the backward tribal belt in the northwest towards the more modern main centres of Pakistan.