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Out of four hundred men, many of who just stood there and even made a video, only one person came to the woman’s rescue and helped her get out of the park in a terrifying incident that happened on Independence Day at Lahore’s Greater Iqbal Park. Question? What deterred the rest to intervene?
The diminishing civic sense and the lack of training at organizational levels is what acting as a catalyst for the deteriorating socio-cultural fabric in Pakistan. When a person sees no one reacting to harassing behaviour, they tend to remain silent. This is generally because they may feel that they are the only ones feeling uncomfortable about the situation and they do not want to create a scene. Not just that, even if someone is ready to step in, they don’t know when to and how to.
Citizens must understand their rights towards the countrymen and their fellow citizens. Studies suggest that a person who witnesses harassment experiences traumatic emotions similar to the ones experienced by the target – ‘bystander stress’. Another common phenomenon is the bystander effect which is people’s tendencies to follow the cues of others when in a group.
Four hundred – reasons are at least here for us to understand the role of bystanders in events of harassment and bullying. One intervention at a time can help shy away what could lead to a catastrophic event like the one at the Greater Iqbal Park. Most people in Pakistan are left numbed when faced with a situation involving someone harassing another person or harassing them; confusion about how to act becomes one of the reasons for further exploitation.
General public has no acumen how to act as a catalyst of help and support rather they add to the misery of the victim by being a spectator.
In the USA, training for the prevention of harassment and intervening in it as a bystander is mandatory at every educational, organizational level and state level. This makes sure that the citizens are aware of their responsibilities to act when need be and know how to respond in situations where they are harassed or they find someone else being harassed.
Every individual must undergo training in one form or the other during his childhood and adolescent years. It seems an uphill task in a country like Pakistan where 22 million children are still out of school and the literacy rate is lowest amongst most of its neighbours.
Such training can be made pre-requisite for a nationalidentity card, driving license, passport and domicile,etc. so that those who are not able to attend the schools are still able to have some basic sense of civilization and responsibility as a citizen of the country.
In Pakistan general public has no acumen how to act as a catalyst of help and support rather they add to the misery of the victim by being a spectator. Bystander intervention is when someone makes an attempt to help the person who is being harassed. This can range from confronting the harasser right there to consoling the victim and reassuring them that what happened is not their fault.
These are the reasons that make bystander intervention training necessary. When citizens are trained on how to recognize harassment, intervene, and help the target, it not only results in improved awareness, it also encourages them to beat the bystander effect and act appropriately. They are more likely to report the incident after the training.
Bystander intervention may range from a more ‘direct’to the passive ‘delay’ ones. A direct approach involves confronting the harasser while distracting the harasser requires diffusing the behaviour in a subtle but effective way. If impossible to intervene one can help the victim in providing assistance to report.
Not a single man intervened to save the women in Greater Iqbal Park’s fiasco is what has been voiced by the public in general and celebrities in particular. Do we ask? When do students and professionals in Pakistan learn how to intervene when faced with such a situation in which they are seeing someone being bullied or they are themselves harassed? Such topics must be integrated into the Single National Curriculum.
About the Author
Muhammad Ali Falak is a Fulbright PhD candidate at Texas A&M University and graduated from The University of Tokyo. He has worked at different positions in Pakistan, Japan and the USA. His work experience includes teaching in universities, research, consultancy and project management and several other businesses. He is also serving as a Senator in the Graduate Professional Student Government at Texas A&M University. Visit his Linkedin page here.
