In the quiet hours after the world has turned away, a young girl sits alone with the weight of what was done to her and asks, first of all, how she is to live. The body that once belonged only to her now carries a memory she did not choose. She wonders whether she may still walk in daylight without feeling every gaze as an accusation, whether she may still trust a neighbour’s greeting or a relative’s hand. She asks if the life she had planned-school, work, friendship, perhaps love-remains open to her, or whether she must learn to inhabit a narrower, shadowed existence. The question is not abstract; it is the daily labour of breathing after violation.

She turns next to her family. Will they gather around her as a shield, or will the old language of honour rise first? In too many households, the fear of shame outweighs the duty of care. The statistics recorded by the National Police Bureau and laid before the National Assembly tell a grim story: between 2021 and 2024, more than one hundred and seventy-three thousand cases of violence against women were registered, among them over sixteen thousand of rape and gang-rape, nearly ninety thousand of kidnapping and abduction, and more than fifteen hundred killings in the name of honour. Year by year the numbers climbed. Yet many families still counsel silence or “compromise,” preferring the appearance of respectability to the difficult work of justice.........

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