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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2010 3:52 am Post subject: The Honour Killing Thread |
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Honour Killing on the rise in India
Triple murder in India highlights increase in 'honour killings'
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There are 1,000 "honour killings" a year in India, according to one recent study, but few reveal the underlying causes as the triple murder of Wazipur. Significantly, the Indian capital itself has seen an unprecedented spate of such incidents in recent weeks.
All six of those involved in last weekend's murders were living on frontiers: between Wazirpur, their working-class neighbourhood, and Ashok Vihar, the adjacent upmarket suburb; between the increasingly cosmopolitan Indian capital and its deeply conservative hinterland; between the crushing poverty of their parent's childhoods and the relative wealth of their own.
It is a world in which caste, traditional authority and arranged marriage clashed with aspirations to Bollywood-style romance. The age of all those involved is significant, according to Professor Surinder Jodhka of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
All were born around the time of the major changes that liberalised India's economy in the early 1990s, sparking rapid growth.
"They grew up in post-reform India.This is a new generation reaching the age of marriage," Jodhjka told the Guardian.
Monica and Kuldeep were on the point of crossing the gulf between the old India and the new. They lived in a rented flat and Kuldeep commuted to his job in a call centre.
They had eloped too � the first from Wazirpur ever to do so. They had also ignored India's system of prejudice and hierarchy as they came from different castes. Yet, their parents had accepted the match. "We were not against it," said Jai Singh Naggar.
Unlike in many "honour killings" � such as that of a girl and her lower caste boyfriend beaten to death with iron rods in another Delhi neighbourhood earlier this month � older family members were not involved.
Nor was there any direct sanction given by community elders. "We cannot stop them. What has to happen will happen. But we do not think it was a good thing to do," said Mahinder Kahri, 64, head of the local council.
The murderers acted alone, albeit having grown up steeped in a culture of honour, patriarchal authority and violent retribution for transgression.
The spark for the killing appears to have been the disappearance of Shobha's sister with her own "boyfriend". Shobha herself had previously run away with a man. She had come back home alone but the damage had been done.
"For years her brother had got no respect round here. Even his friends were taunting him. When Shobha did the same thing, he just felt he had to act," Saurav, 18, told the Guardian.
Shobha's brother thus sought out Ankit, the brother of Monica. He too was being taunted for the shame his sister's unauthorised marriage brought the family. The two enlisted a mutual friend.
Prem Chowdhry, a respected historian and researcher, said it was unsurprising that young men had taken the lead role. In the neighbouring state of Haryana, foeticide of girls has led to a ratio of 800 women to every 1,000 men. Women also "marry up" � Monica's husband came from the higher rajput class � leaving more than a third of lower caste men without wives, she said.
"The social situation is very volatile. The marriage market is very tight and that causes huge problems. Youngsters react very strongly. If a woman makes an independent choice she has to pay the penalty," Chowdhry said.
In Wazirpur yesterday, teenage boys were backing the murderers. "Whatever happened is for the best. There's a limit to how much you can take. I'd do the same to my sister," said Rohit, 17.
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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Robert Fisk is doing a series of articles on Honour Killings, and I thought I would post them here.
It's something that the British police and authorities have only begun to take seriously in recent years, after many years of pressure from female activists. It's not only women who fall victims to honour killings, either (as the post above demonstrates) and more than a few gay men have come to a grisly end to save their families honour. I haven't read all of Fisk's articles yet, so I don't know if he addresses that.
Here's the first article in the 4 part series:
Robert Fisk: The crimewave that shames the world
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| It's one of the last great taboos: the murder of at least 20,000 women a year in the name of 'honour'. Nor is the problem confined to the Middle East: the contagion is spreading rapidly |
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It is a tragedy, a horror, a crime against humanity. The details of the murders � of the women beheaded, burned to death, stoned to death, stabbed, electrocuted, strangled and buried alive for the "honour" of their families � are as barbaric as they are shameful. Many women's groups in the Middle East and South-west Asia suspect the victims are at least four times the United Nations' latest world figure of around 5,000 deaths a year. Most of the victims are young, many are teenagers, slaughtered under a vile tradition that goes back hundreds of years but which now spans half the globe.
A 10-month investigation by The Independent in Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank has unearthed terrifying details of murder most foul. Men are also killed for "honour" and, despite its identification by journalists as a largely Muslim practice, Christian and Hindu communities have stooped to the same crimes. Indeed, the "honour" (or ird) of families, communities and tribes transcends religion and human mercy. But voluntary women's groups, human rights organisations, Amnesty International and news archives suggest that the slaughter of the innocent for "dishonouring" their families is increasing by the year.
Iraqi Kurds, Palestinians in Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey appear to be the worst offenders but media freedoms in these countries may over-compensate for the secrecy which surrounds "honour" killings in Egypt � which untruthfully claims there are none � and other Middle East nations in the Gulf and the Levant. But honour crimes long ago spread to Britain, Belgium, Russia and Canada and many other nations. Security authorities and courts across much of the Middle East have connived in reducing or abrogating prison sentences for the family murder of women, often classifying them as suicides to prevent prosecutions.
It is difficult to remain unemotional at the vast and detailed catalogue of these crimes. How should one react to a man � this has happened in both Jordan and Egypt � who rapes his own daughter and then, when she becomes pregnant, kills her to save the "honour" of his family? Or the Turkish father and grandfather of a 16-year-old girl, Medine Mehmi, in the province of Adiyaman, who was buried alive beneath a chicken coop in February for "befriending boys"? Her body was found 40 days later, in a sitting position and with her hands tied.
Or Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, 13, who in Somalia in 2008, in front of a thousand people, was dragged to a hole in the ground � all the while screaming, "I'm not going � don't kill me" � then buried up to her neck and stoned by 50 men for adultery? After 10 minutes, she was dug up, found to be still alive and put back in the hole for further stoning. Her crime? She had been raped by three men and, fatally, her family decided to report the facts to the Al-Shabab militia that runs Kismayo. Or the Al-Shabab Islamic "judge" in the same country who announced the 2009 stoning to death of a woman � the second of its kind the same year � for having an affair? Her boyfriend received a mere 100 lashes.
Or the young woman found in a drainage ditch near Daharki in Pakistan, "honour" killed by her family as she gave birth to her second child, her nose, ears and lips chopped off before being axed to death, her first infant lying dead among her clothes, her newborn's torso still in her womb, its head already emerging from her body? She was badly decomposed; the local police were asked to bury her. Women carried the three to a grave, but a Muslim cleric refused to say prayers for her because it was "irreligious" to participate in the namaz-e-janaza prayers for "a cursed woman and her illegitimate children".
So terrible are the details of these "honour" killings, and so many are the women who have been slaughtered, that the story of each one might turn horror into banality. But lest these acts � and the names of the victims, when we are able to discover them � be forgotten, here are the sufferings of a mere handful of women over the past decade, selected at random, country by country, crime after crime.
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Click on the link above to read the whole article.
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:18 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:08 pm Post subject: Robert Fisk: Relatives with blood on their hands |
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Robert Fisk: Relatives with blood on their hands
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| Eight of the women who sought refuge in Hina Jilani's Lahore shelter died later at the hands of their families. In the second part of our investigation, the lawyer explains how authorities covered up |
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"So far, I've lost eight women from my shelter," Hina Jilani says. "One went out for a job in town, she left our shelter, got on a bus � and was gunned down by her brother. Her name was Shagofta, she was in her late twenties. She had already married the man she loved but the parents had disapproved. Her brother got straight off the bus and went to the police station and gave himself up. But his father � Shagofta's father � 'forgave' him. So he was let off. And nothing happened."
Ms Jilani is a tough, brave lawyer with a harsh way of describing the "honour killing" � the murder � of young women. She has to be tough, given the death threats she's received from Pakistan's Islamists. She speaks with contempt for the families who murder their women � with even more contempt for the police and the judges who allow the killers to go free. Pakistan has the grotesque reputation of being one of the leading "honour-killing" countries in the world.
"Some of the women in our Dastak shelter in Lahore left us after assurances from their families that they would not be harmed," Ms Jilani says. "We always tell the women not to accept these assurances. In the Lahore High Court, I was sitting there when the judge was insisting that a women from our shelter should go back to her parents. The more the judge insisted, the more the woman resisted. He made her sit in his chambers and then in the court. And then, as she left the High Court gate, they shot her down. The judge said nothing."
Before he resigned in 2008, President Pervez Musharraf was asked why nothing had been done to alleviate the plight of women in Pakistan. There was no money available, the General said. But Pakistan had to spend money on nuclear and conventional weapons "in order to live honourably". National honour, it seemed, mattered more than the lives and honour of the women of Pakistan.
In Ms Jilani's office in Lahore, where fans whirl against the heat in small rooms crammed with legal files, faded documents and trilling telephones, an armed guard sits at the door. "The eight women from our shelter who were murdered � this has become a big scandal," Ms Jilani says, her voice rising as her anger rekindles itself. "There is a law in this country � it's always the family that conspires to kill, so if the father or brother kills, the family forgives him and there's no charge. The law says there can be a 'compromise' at any stage without any evidence coming into court. The trial simply stops if there is a compromise. The court has to give its permission for a compromise � but it always gives permission. This means an automatic acquittal. This means that there is no stain on the murderers."
Ms Jilani went to the police after Shagofta was killed by her brother on the Lahore bus. "We asked them what they were doing. They said the family had forgiven the brother. 'We have no power now to investigate,' they said. I sent this to the Commission on the Status of Women � and they took this case up with the Inspector General of Punjab. So far, there has been no response. I sent letters to the IG myself. Then he said that the 'investigation' was still going on. But there was no 'evidence' � of course not, because the girl was killed, as they say, 'in the heart of the family'."
Ms Jilani sighs, often. Sitting in the chair opposite her desk at the end of her office, listening to her furious indignation, I get the impression � indeed, I have the absolute conviction � that she faces a set of Islamist laws going back to the time of another dictator, Zia al-Haq, that are constantly undermining her lawyer's soul.
"There was a girl here and she wanted to marry against her parents' wishes. So her brother killed her husband-to-be. He went to jail after being sentenced to 14 years. He wanted to go after the girl, his sister. She sought shelter here with us. Her family blame her because her brother is in jail.
"To this day, we don't know what to do with the girl. She is now doing secretarial work here in our office. She has enough economic independence. But her fianc�'s family have no sympathy with her because their son is dead. And her protection is the duty of the state � not mine. She's been here in the office for two years now. Our office guard brings her here and back to the shelter every day."
One of the most savage of all the "honour" murders was committed in the very office in which we are sitting. A decade ago, it brought world publicity and caused international outrage � which had not the slightest effect. The killing of Samia Sarwar still haunts Ms Jalani. "She was shot where you are sitting," she said. "I saw the holes in her head. Her brains were on the wall behind you."
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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Robert Fisk: The lie behind mass 'suicides' of Egypt's young women
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| Part three of our series demolishes the official claim that Egypt, where a farmer decapitated his own daughter, has no 'honour' killings |
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There's a sewer outside Azza Suleiman's office, a hot ditch in which the filth of one of Cairo's worst slums has been reduced to a slowly moving swamp of black liquid. A blue mist of exhaust fumes and dust moves down alleyways thick with scarved women, men in white robes, coffee sellers, donkey carts and garbage boys, the five- and six-year-olds who come down from the Mokkatam hills to gather up Cairo's garbage every morning. Some of it feeds their goats and � yes � the pigs bred in the rotting suburbs. A veil of smog lies over this misery. But a veil of a different kind lies over Egypt, a covering which Azza Suleiman is determined to tear away.
Officially, Egypt has no "honour" killings. Young women may commit suicide, yes, but they are never murdered. This is the government line � and of course, it is a lie. The files in Azza Suleiman's Centre for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance office � and in those of other NGOs in Cairo � tell the truth. In May of 2007, a farmer in southern Egypt decapitated his daughter after discovering she had a boyfriend. In March of 2008, a man identified only as "Mursi" electrocuted and beat to death his 17-year-old daughter because she had received a phone call from her boyfriend. "Mursi", a farmer from Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile Delta, admitted he "beat her with a large stick" before finishing her off with electric shocks; the murder was only discovered when the body turned up at the local hospital.
Azza Suleiman's work provides much bleaker material. Incest is a major problem which no one will discuss, she says. Recently, an Egyptian man admitted killing his daughter because she was pregnant. But he was the father of his daughter's unborn child. It was a case of incest. But he killed her to protect the family's "honour". Four other women have recently been murdered by their families because they were raped. The Christian Coptic community � perhaps 10 per cent of the Egyptian population � has closed itself off from any "honour" killing investigations even though Christian girls have been murdered because they wanted to marry Muslim men. "Christians cannot talk about this outside the church," Azza Suleiman complains. "We have tried to open up shelters, but the government will not allow it. They say: 'Please, no talk of incest.' And 'honour' crimes are often also related to inheritance."
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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Robert Fisk: A place of refuge from fear and guilt
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| The final part of our series visits a Jordanian women's group that has opened shelters nationwide to protect victims of marital abuse |
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It is a small villa in a shady street, with a sunny courtyard and trees, and a kitchen tucked away at the end of an alleyway, and there are cheerful women in scarves to explain Jordanian laws on marriage and divorce to girls who come to them, frightened, desperate, in fear of their lives.
But within the villa lie the dark secrets of a society, stories which are not supposed to be told, tales of female terror and death which are meant to remain within the family, within the community, within the refugee camps. These stories are not for strangers from the West. Yet Nadia Shamroukh � perhaps the most exuberant, courageous, intelligent woman to emerge in this women's organisation � wants to talk: about the 4,000 women who have passed through her group's shelters; about her staff who work for nothing; about their lawyers who fight for the rights of women in the courts; about their 14 offices in Jordan which try to protect the country's women from violence and death threats. Irbid is the busiest, along with the Palestinian refugee camps.
Just now, she is dealing with one of the curses of marital abuse: Egyptian women who are courted by Jordanian men in Cairo and agree to marry them � Jordanian papers are more valuable than an Egyptian passport � only to find when they reach Amman that their husbands are Jordanian gypsies.
"These men do not want to work and they expect their wives to make money for them by dancing in bars or by prostitution or begging," Shamroukh says with anger. "The women come to us for help and the Egyptian embassy here is very good and we find ways for a divorce and to get them back to Egypt."
One of her organisation's lawyers has been threatened by the family of a Jordanian gypsy who wanted to keep his wife � the woman, a Cairo university student, has just returned to Egypt to study law and to help women's groups there. The police had treated her as guilty for not staying with her husband. There are nine women hiding in Shamroukh's shelter this week, most of them fearful of death after being accused of "honour" crimes. There were 18 last week. Yet Nadia Shamroukh glows as she takes me round the villa � it has been bought by the women's union � where women, separated by divorce and family divisions, bring their children to see their fathers.
Three couples are sitting silently under a tree, talking quietly, a little girl playing on a slide in the garden. There is a humanity about this place. There's an internet cafe on the first floor and a shop sells chocolate and sandwiches. There's a small library for the women up the road. And there's a one-room salon for the women in the shelter to learn hairdressing. A young staff member walks up with a coffee from the sandwich shop and a file of papers; two of the shelter girls smile at her. "We try to give the women training and to help them earn money, to be strong enough to go ahead with their lives," she says. "Maybe we can find a chance of a job for her. When we first wanted to open this shelter, the government and police came to us and wanted to guard it � they wanted to turn it into a jail. We said 'no'. This is not what we want at all."
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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This was published in the Independent on the day the 4 part series began. I think it's an additional article written by Fisk which is surplus to the series.
One woman's nightmare, and a crime against humanity
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| Forced to marry her own rapist, Hanan now lives in terror of losing her son � and of being murdered by her family. Her case-history introduces a four-day series investigating a global scandal that destroys many thousands of lives every year |
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Call her Hanan. She sits in front of me, a red scarf tied round her long intelligent face, her wide, bright eyes sparkling as she tells her story, her two-year-old son Omar restless on the chair beside her. To save the "honour" of her family � and to avoid being killed by her youngest brother � she has married her own rapist. To save the "honour" of her family � to stay alive � she is now divorcing her rapist. Omar, drinking orange juice, jumping on his plastic chair, is the rapist's son.
Hanan is the victim of a vast, corrupt system of "honour" crimes that plagues the Middle East, and takes the lives of at least 5,000 women � perhaps four times that number � a year, a vicious patriarchal system of extra-judicial killings in which a chance conversation between an unmarried woman and a stranger, a mere rumour of extra-marital relations � let alone sexual relations � leads to death by throat-cutting, strangulation, beheading or shooting. These executions � usually by members of the women's own family � are almost always committed in secret. They are always brutal. They are a scourge on society. Policemen and judges often connive with the murderers.
Hanan is a Palestinian Sunni Muslim, raped in her own home in Jordan by another Palestinian, but "honour" crimes are neither a uniquely Muslim phenomenon nor a religious tradition. Christians practice the "honour killing" of women. So do Hindus. From south-east Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan to Pakistan and India, in Egypt and Gaza and the West Bank � across an area far wider than the old Ottoman empire � women are shamefully murdered to "cleanse" their families amid the squalor of mountain villages, refugee camps and city slums. "Honour" crimes are the greatest taboo of the region which, through emigration, has spread to Europe and the Americas.
Hanan has been lucky � so far. She tells her story with courage, sitting beside the women who run a shelter in Amman for Jordan's potential "honour" victims. But 31-year-old Hanan is also frightened. Exactly a week after we met, a Jordanian man confessed to killing his 16-year-old niece to save his family's "honour" after she was sexually assaulted � Hanan's own tragedy � by a 17-year-old who took her virginity. The uncle fired 30 machine-gun rounds at his niece at Deir Alla, close to Amman, "to cleanse the family honour", although other members of his family had already married the girl off to a cousin in the hope of concealing the rape.
"My father is blind and I was living with him in a very small house, looking after him when he wasn't selling feather dusters," Hanan says. "The rest of my family � my mother, three brothers and two sisters � live elsewhere. All I did was look after my father. Then one afternoon when my father was at work, I went to take a nap. But I woke up to find a man on top of me. He was a thief who had got in through the roof and I couldn't get him off me. I could do nothing. I screamed and screamed but no one heard me and he raped me. He was a rough-looking man , with the scar of a knife wound on his cheek and tattoos on his arms. I think he was drunk because he smelled of alcohol. He was like a demon.
"I tried to commit suicide the same afternoon, so I wouldn't have to tell my father what had happened. I swallowed a whole pack of pills. Nothing happened � but I slept for two whole days. I wanted to tell my father, but I didn't tell him for another 10 days. When I did, he was very upset and he was crying. He got sick and at one point they were going to take him to hospital. Then he said to me: 'No one knows and no one needs to know, so we can keep it between us. But after a month and a half, I had symptoms like I was pregnant � still, I didn't tell my father this for another two months. I was too shy. But my period didn't come for three months. My father then told me to go to a doctor to have a check-up. He was sad and crying all the time." By the standards of other poor Palestinian families, Hanan's father was a remarkably kind man. Still Hanan's mother and brothers and sisters knew nothing of her plight.
"I discovered I was pregnant when I went to the doctor. Both my father and I were very fearful. Both of us were scared of my brothers and how they would react. I was most scared of the youngest, who is 24, a typical Jordanian guy, easily angered. So we left our place and moved elsewhere in Amman without telling the rest of the family. I tried to do an abortion by drinking anything I could find. I got many medications, but they didn't work. We tried to find someone who would do the abortion but we didn't know anyone. Days were going by � and it was obvious I was pregnant. All the time, of course, the family were trying to find us."
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Click on the link to read the full article. |
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stilicho25
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:16 am Post subject: |
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| Unbelievable. I don't care for Fisk, but the man can write. I don't even know how you could approach the problem. When a judge isn't willing to protect you, who will? The law seems to mean nothing. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:22 am Post subject: |
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But BB, don't you know? He's anti-Israel! Nothing he writes is of value. He's just a Palestinian stooge!
Oh, hmm. Maybe not.
| stillcho25 wrote: |
When a judge isn't willing to protect you, who will? The law seems to mean nothing. |
That is a big problem in the region. And not just in regards to women's issues but all legal matters.
edit: cleaned up quote.
Last edited by bucheon bum on Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:19 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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stilicho25
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 10:44 am Post subject: |
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| I think he does unfairly single out Israel. You can criticize without the vitriol that he seems to reserve for Israel. I also think, like Christopher Hitchens, that he swings wild sometimes. He is also a talented writer and journalist. I remember reading some pieces of his before the Iranian election. he talked to everyone, and really captured the mood of the country. One particular interview stood out. He interviewed a very religious lieutenant in the Iranian army supervising the election preparations. He painted him in very sympathetic and even handed tones, while showing that their was going to be some serious trouble. When he doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, he is delightful to read. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| stilicho25 wrote: |
| I think he does unfairly single out Israel. You can criticize without the vitriol that he seems to reserve for Israel. I also think, like Christopher Hitchens, that he swings wild sometimes. He is also a talented writer and journalist. I remember reading some pieces of his before the Iranian election. he talked to everyone, and really captured the mood of the country. One particular interview stood out. He interviewed a very religious lieutenant in the Iranian army supervising the election preparations. He painted him in very sympathetic and even handed tones, while showing that their was going to be some serious trouble. When he doesn't have a chip on his shoulder, he is delightful to read. |
I think if you had experienced the war in Lebanon in the eighties first hand, as Fisk did, you would also have a very critical view of how Israel and the West have conducted themselves in the Middle East. It's so far out of your experience, that you can't begin to comprehend. If you did, you couldn't have written this post. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 1:51 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
But BB, don't you know? He's anti-Israel! Nothing he writes is of value. He's just a Palestinian stooge!
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Quite right...quite right.  |
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