To the credit of the authorities, and in part because of the
international sympathy
aroused by an unusual amount of publicity, significant steps were taken to, ameliorate the plight of the victimized women; nevertheless, the incident clearly dramatizes not only the vulnerability of women to this particular form of violence but also the injustice of a culture, sanctioned by religion, which regards the woman's sexual integrity as primarily the
concern of husbands and male relatives whose honor is at stake: bluntly, she is property, not a full person in her own right.