KARACHI (Reuters) - Ayesha Baloch was dragged to a field, her brother-in-law held the 18-year-old down, her husband sat astride her legs and slit her upper lip and nostril with a knife.
They call such assaults on women a matter of "honor" in some Pakistani communities, but for the majority it is a source of national shame.
Married less than two months ago in Pakistan's central district of Dera Ghazi Khan, Baloch was accused of having sexual relations with another man before marriage.
"First they tortured me and beat me. I started screaming. Akbar then caught my hands and pulled me to the ground. Essa sat on my legs and cut my nose and lips," Baloch mumbled through her bandages at hospital in the city of Multan.
"I was bleeding and started screaming after they fled on a motorcycle. People heard me and rescued me and took me to my mother's home."
At least she wasn't killed.
More than 1,000 women are slain by their husbands or relatives, and that is just the reported, not actual, number of "honor killings" in Pakistan each year.
Many killings are planned rather than done in rage, and the motive often has more to do with money or settling scores.
The same week, a world away from Baloch's village, social activists, parliamentarians and community leaders gathered in the suburban, leafy capital of Islamabad to launch a campaign -- "We Can End Honor Killing".
Farhana Faruqi Stocker, country director of international aid agency Oxfam, said some 10,000 people called "change-makers" had signed up so far.
But Stocker knows two constituencies will be vital to the campaign's success.
"The mindset of legislators has to be changed in order for good legislation to come out," Stocker told Reuters.
But she is well aware that there are many remote rural areas of Pakistan where maulvis, or clerics, exert more influence than local government and federal law.
"In order to bring change, we have to engage with clerics."
MORE THAN LAWS NEEDED
Pakistan is a country living in many centuries at once.
Its small, Westernised elite embrace the 21st, conservative clerics preach strict interpretations of Islam from the Middle Ages, while many of its poor rural communities are governed by tribal customs going back long before Islam arrived.
The same week, a world away from Baloch's village, social activists, parliamentarians and community leaders gathered in the suburban, leafy capital of Islamabad to launch a campaign -- "We Can End Honor Killing".
Farhana Faruqi Stocker, country director of international aid agency Oxfam, said some 10,000 people called "change-makers" had signed up so far.
But Stocker knows two constituencies will be vital to the campaign's success.
"The mindset of legislators has to be changed in order for good legislation to come out," Stocker told Reuters.
But she is well aware that there are many remote rural areas of Pakistan where maulvis, or clerics, exert more influence than local government and federal law.
"In order to bring change, we have to engage with clerics."
MORE THAN LAWS NEEDED
Pakistan is a country living in many centuries at once.
Its small, Westernised elite embrace the 21st, conservative clerics preach strict interpretations of Islam from the Middle Ages, while many of its poor rural communities are governed by tribal customs going back long before Islam arrived.
The same week, a world away from Baloch's village, social activists, parliamentarians and community leaders gathered in the suburban, leafy capital of Islamabad to launch a campaign -- "We Can End Honor Killing".
Farhana Faruqi Stocker, country director of international aid agency Oxfam, said some 10,000 people called "change-makers" had signed up so far.
But Stocker knows two constituencies will be vital to the campaign's success.
"The mindset of legislators has to be changed in order for good legislation to come out," Stocker told Reuters.
But she is well aware that there are many remote rural areas of Pakistan where maulvis, or clerics, exert more influence than local government and federal law.
"In order to bring change, we have to engage with clerics."
MORE THAN LAWS NEEDED
Pakistan is a country living in many centuries at once.
Its small, Westernised elite embrace the 21st, conservative clerics preach strict interpretations of Islam from the Middle Ages, while many of its poor rural communities are governed by tribal customs going back long before Islam arrived.
They tracked her down in the city, having traveled from a village in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, then seized her, shot her and left her for dead in a ditch. She survived for a month in hospital, until a stomach wound became infected.
She was 14.
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