‘Victim-blaming never ends’: Sharmila Faruqi schools Gohar over violent scene with Sarah

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Sharmila Faruqi recently responded to actor Gohar Rasheed’s reflections on violence against women on Instagram, disagreeing with the actor’s assertion that “oppression is a choice.”

The Digest Writer actor had posted a message on Instagram to address a slap scene from his drama Laapata that was being widely shared on social media.

The actor had posted that the reason he accepted the role of Daniyal in the drama was to “prove that oppression is a choice”. “If any insecure man with his fragile ego tries his ‘so called’ muscles on you, make the choice that Falak did without any fear,” he had written. “One tight slap back from a brave woman to such weak man in our society would be a giant leap for women kind.”

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A post shared by Mirza Gohar (@mirzagoharrasheed)

Faruqi replied to Rasheed’s post, saying that oppression is “not a choice”. “It’s a hard reality,” she wrote.

“Thousands of women are oppressed daily not because they chose to be oppressed but because they don’t have the choice to hit back or leave. Marital rapes, domestic violence, acid victims, child marriages are rampant because the victims are helpless physically and financially. They suffer in silence and those who do muster the courage to fight back are either silenced, murdered or divorced with no where to go. The victim blaming never ends, it’s a vicious cycle.”