Tracey Barnett: Musharraf’s home secrets

A few days ago, Mukhtaran Bibi, a young Pakistani woman gang-raped by order of village elders as retribution for the actions of her brother, was due to give a talk in the United States on her ordeal and its life-changing aftermath.

A week ago, Pakistani guards surrounded her village home, her movements were restricted and all phone contact was cut off with those outside.

Mukhtaran's story is one President Pervez Musharraf might not want to follow him.

Her nightmare began three years ago when her 12-year-old brother got caught up in a tribal conflict. As punishment, village elders ordered his older sister, Mukhtaran Bibi, to be gang-raped by men from the dominant tribe, the Mastoi.

As several hundred people watched, she was dragged screaming though a cotton field and into a mud-walled house where she was assaulted for more than an hour. Forced to wait outside for his daughter to emerge, her father and brother finally covered her half-naked body with a shawl and guided her home through the crowd.

Most assumed she would commit suicide from the shame.

"In this area, there is no law and no justice. A woman is left with one option, and that is to die," Mukhtaran told the Guardian.

But she shocked Pakistan and caused world-wide press attention by taking her case to the Pakistani courts and winning - at first. The perpetrators were sentenced at a trial in 2002, until that verdict was overturned this week. A court in Lahore refused to extend a 90-day detention order and now 12 of the 14 accused are free, angering human and women's rights activists worldwide.

An unmarried daughter from a low-caste family, Mukhtaran's life has continued to take unexpected turns. With US$133,000 ($186,400) in donations raised from an article in the New York Times, she opened the first schools in her village, welcoming girls as well as boys, and making a point of inviting the children of the men who raped her to become students.

She has opened an abused women's shelter and bought a van to be used as a village ambulance. Time magazine called her one of Asia's heroes.

Honoured for her courage, she was invited to the US to speak until Musharraf's Government, citing her own protection, put her under house arrest last week, listed her travel movements as "exit controlled", and cut her telephone.

She was taken to the capital and gave a press conference, saying she decided of her own free will not to go abroad, because her mother was ill.

Mukhtaran is a vital representative of the progressive human rights face Musharraf would want Pakistan to present to the world. Curbing her ability to tell her story is a far more dangerous public relations gamble than allowing her to speak freely at home or abroad.