Some 400 villagers from the village of Basti Ahmad Din in Punjab have refused to evacuate it despite facing starvation and diseases.
Situated in Rojhan, the village is surrounded by floodwaters but its residents declared that moving to a relief camp would entail its women mingling with other men, which would be ‘against their honor’.
However, the women in question themselves have no say in the decision. When asked about her preference between staying or going to a relief camp, 17-year-old Shireen Bibi remarked, “It is up to the village elders to decide”.
The devastating recent monsoon rains have wreaked havoc across the country, submerging a large land mass completely. Small villages like the Basti Ahmad Din are facing the destruction of not only their homes but the loss of their crops and livestock.
This small village has lost over half of its 90 houses so far while the cotton crops all around it are rotting in inundated fields. The dirt road to the village, which was its only connection to the nearest city, is also under 10 feet of water.
The villagers can only buy food and supplies on flimsy wooden boats whose operators charge high fares, taking advantage of the situation. Instead of taking their families to camps or out of the village with them, the men of Basti Ahmad Din prefer to make the expensive boat trip to the nearest relief camp for aid and supplies once a week themselves.
The families in the village are rationing the little food and wheat grain they have left but refuse to leave the village despite the pleas of the rescue workers and volunteers.
The village elders — all of whom are men — say it is only acceptable for women to leave the village in emergency situations such as ill health but not in the face of natural disaster.
A village elder, Mureed Hussain, revealed the locals did not evacuate during the previous devastating floods in 2010 either.
Referring to themselves as Baloch (the ethnicity of the dominant ethnic group of the village), a villager by the name of Muhammad Amir explained that they do not let their women go out and would rather starve and try to get by than let their families leave the village.
