IN A Pakistani village so backward and remote that it has yet to receive electricity or running water a frail, half-literate, 32-year-old woman taught the Koran yesterday to 80 girls sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor of her school.

But Mukhtaran Mai is no ordinary teacher. She was the victim of a particularly appalling gang rape three years ago who, almost uniquely in Pakistan, refused meekly to accept what happened to her. She has since become a champion of her country’s oppressed women and an inspiration to human rights activists everywhere.

Yesterday alone more than 1,500 poor people arrived in her village from far and wide to show their support for this courageous woman. “Move forward Mai, we are with you,” they chanted. Visibly moved, she told them: “Even if I don’t succeed in my struggle, I will keep trying until my death.”

Ms Mai now addresses rallies across Pakistan and abroad. She has shamed her Government into supporting her battle for justice. Thanks to her growing international fame she has received financial contributions from around the world. These she has used to build the first school for girls in her village, Meerwala, in the southern Punjab province.

For Ms Mai the schools are not only a means to fight for female empowerment, they also give her reason to live. “The work has helped me to overcome my sufferings,” she said.

This confident young teacher is completely transformed from the battered, weeping woman I met in June 2002, a week after she was raped on the orders of her village council as a punishment for her 16-year-old brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher social group. She told me then that she had been dragged inside a mud house and raped at gunpoint by four men, including a member of the council. Her screams were drowned by about 500 jeering men gathered outside. Her father, a farm worker, listened helplessly to her cries.

Her life seemed ruined and her chances of marrying negligible. “I thought of committing suicide,” she said yesterday. “But the support I received from the people gave me the courage to live and fight.” Gang rapes and honour killings of women remain common in those parts of Pakistan where feudal and tribal systems still hold sway. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported 670 rapes in the first ten months of 2004, and most rapists and killers go free because of poor policing and the victims’ fear of speaking out.

But Ms Mai was different. Her case was reported in The Times, and then widely in other foreign newspapers. She summoned the courage to defy threats of further retribution to testify in open court. In September 2002 she won her first legal battle when a court convicted and sentenced to death six men, including the head of the village council.

But on March 3 this year an appeal court overturned the original verdict, acquitting five men and reducing the sentence of the sixth to life imprisonment. That decision provoked nationwide protests. Thousands of women joined rallies. The acquittal raised an international outcry over the treatment of women in Pakistan.

The Government, recognising the strength of Ms Mai’s support, said it would file an appeal in the Supreme Court, which yesterday announced that it was taking the case over.

After the original ruling Ms Mai received £6,000 in compensation from the Government, which she used to build the Mukhtaran Mai School for girls and Farid Gujjar school for boys, which she named after her father.

The schools are very basic. There are no desks and no chairs. Initially the villagers were hesitant to send their daughters to classes, but Ms Mai went from house to house to persuade the parents, and more than 400 children now attend the two schools and look happy to be there.

“It is only through education that we can change the minds of the people,” said Ms Mai, who had no formal education.

She gives Koran lessons to her pupils while she teaches herself to read and write Urdu and English. “It is a big achievement, but we have to do more,” Ms Mai said.

Money is now beginning to arrive. Last week the Canadian High Commissioner in Islamabad visited the village and donated £100,000. Other, private donations have come from Europe and America.

Ms Mai has had to employ a secretary to cope with all the letters she receives and has been flown to Spain, India and Saudi Arabia by women’s rights groups.

Despite her good works she still fears for her life as she seeks to overturn the male-orientated traditions of centuries. There are police checkpoints on the road to her village, and she has personally paid for the construction of a police post outside her mud house.

But she sees progress in that she has received several marriage proposals despite being a rape victim. Wary of gold-diggers, she said: “I’ll only marry a person who’s prepared to stay in my village and work with me in my schools.”

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