成人论坛

Ahead of Pakistan’s recent general election, we saw a rising need to address issues such as human rights, religious minorities and controlling extremism.

Voters, with the help of social media, have been putting pressure on would-be politicians over these issues. The Pakistan People’s Party had to withdraw endorsement from more than 15 candidates after it emerged they’d sought the support of an extremist religious-political group in Karachi, with most of the criticism coming from young social media users.

Against this backdrop, we wanted to observe the perceptions and reactions of three young, confident women from different backgrounds on the political and social situation in the country, while also offering them an opportunity to experience what 成人论坛 journalists do as part of their work.

Born and brought up in Karachi, Mehvish Ikhlaq now lives in Islamabad and runs her own shop which stocks motorbike spare parts and equipment. She married early, was widowed at the age of 22, and has decided to focus on her biking trips.

Tayyaba Tariq’s family belongs to the district of Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, India. As she moved to Pakistan with her mother to join her father in Lahore, seeing her passion for riding bikes, he got her a 70cc bike. In 2015, she made her first high altitude ride to the 5000m above sea level border between Pakistan and China, at Khunjerab.

Guliafshan Tariq, a software engineer from Sargodha, is the only woman to have travelled the entire Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit region on a motorbike. Her 2017 trip was funded by a private organisation and earned her a place in Pakistan’s National Book of Records.

The achievements of the three women have made them brand ambassadors with everyone, from travel groups to bikers, government institutions, and the armed forces, all vying to showcase empowered, self-sufficient Pakistani women.

In our 成人论坛 News Urdu On Wheels series, however, we wanted them to speak to women who had no agency to speak out.

As part of the first leg of the trip, the three of them headed from Islamabad to Galyat’s Makol Village, near Abbottabad, where a 16-year-old girl was chained and torched to death in 2016. Tayyaba said she had been to the place before, in 2017, and took a picture near the site, but no one told her that the incident had occurred there.

Another part of the bikers’ trip was their visit to bangle makers in Hyderabad, known for its bangle industry spread across the rest of the province. A majority of the estimated 3.5m men, women and children contributing to this industry do not get equal wages and go unrecognised.

In 2013 a huge fire broke out inside a home where women were working, and the issue was indirectly blamed on the workers for contributing to this ‘informal’ and ‘illegal’ industry. In this election, the home-based workers told us they were going to fight for their right to be recognised and heard more, although a law to recognise their skills with a minimum wage was passed by the provincial assembly in 2017.

Mehvish considered how people wear bangles without having any idea of how they are made, or where they come from. Tayyaba engrossed herself in discussion with one of the union workers present about what women did to protect themselves from industrial accidents.

Speaking about her experiences with us, Tayyaba said that she would continue to speak up and discuss uncomfortable issues during her next bike trip, because if people didn’t talk about the negative then there would be no positive results.

Filming three women on motorbikes across Pakistan to investigate so-called honour killing, unequal wages and water woes was seen as an editorial challenge. Looking back at it, 成人论坛 News Urdu On Wheels turned out a success - supported by our production team, the effort put in by the bikers more than made up for any doubts.