January 1 2007: Honour Killings
Filed under Politics
We women have it pretty easy here in the western world. We have a right to an education. We have the right to vote. We are allowed to drive, to work, to live by ourselves. We are not under the thumb of our father or brothers, and we can make our own decisions about who to marry. We can usually have pre-marital sexual relationships with no snubbing from society. But we take this all for granted, with no knowledge of the mistreatment that some women suffer in Arabian countries. How do women live in other cultures?
Samia Sawar was a 29-year-old mother of two children. She was married to a man who had physically abused her day-in, day-out. Her family had arranged the marriage. She ran away from him numerous times, but was always captured and brought back. She had escaped to her parent’s house after her husband had pushed her down the stairs when she was pregnant, but they refused to help her get a divorce and sent her back. Finally, on the 6th of April 1999, she was shot dead in her lawyer’s office in Lebanon for demanding a divorce. The perpetrator of this shooting was her mother’s chauffeur. Her mother had been present at the shooting and walked calmly away afterwards saying that her husband wanted her to cleanse the family’s honour from the disgrace of Samia seeking a divorce. No one has been convicted of her murder.
In March 1999, a 16-year-old mentally impaired girl Lal Jamilla Mandolkhel was raped by a junior law clerk in a hotel room in Jordan. When her uncle reported the offense to the police, they took her back to her tribe to let them decide what to do. The tribe decided that she had brought shame to the tribe for being involved in sexual activities before marriage, even though it had been forced upon her and for leaking this news to the police. She was shot in front of the tribe. Neither the shooter nor the law clerk has received any form of punishment.
Sabira Khan was married at sixteen to a man more than twice her age. At the time of the wedding in 1991, she was forbidden to ever make contact with her family again. In 1993 when she tried to do so, her husband and mother-in-law held her down, poured kerosene over her and set her on fire. She was three months pregnant. She survived though, although more than half of her body was badly burnt. She tried to appeal at court, but was turned down, as the husband said that she was insane and tried to burn herself. She was reported missing two weeks later by her family.
Muhammad Younis killed his wife and mother of his two children for adultery, despite the fact that medical evidence shows that never happened. The court accepted his decision, saying that if ‘he was enraged enough to slash his wife repeatedly, she must have done something wrong’. He is still walking the streets.
Miyadda is a thirteen-year-old crippled girl. She was raped at the age of eleven by two men and then pushed onto train tracks in an attempt to kill her. Despite the knowledge that she will never walk again, her main troubles aren’t that. She knows that she will never marry as men in Third War countries don’t marry women who have already ‘been used’. She also fears for her life, as she knows she will be a burden on her family.
Rudayena Jamael was shot in the head one night while she slept. There was no sign of a forced entry or robberies. The perpetrator was her own son. He admits to killing her, but argues that he had just cause. Rudayena had wanted to remarry after 19 years of divorce. He spent two weeks in jail, and was then released.
In May 2000, 18-year-old Pakistani Bilkees was brutally slain by her brother Qadir and a neighbor. She saw them enter her room with old-fashioned pickaxes and tried to talk to them, but they refused to listen. They dragged her to a field nearby, tied her to a tree, and Qadir started hacking at her with the pickaxe. She was found with her bodily parts scattered around the base of the tree. The reason for her brutal murder was that Qadir had seen her talking to a boy in the village and had brought shame onto her family for her behavior. Bilkees was buried anonymously.
18-year-old bride Saana was beaten and mistreated everyday by her husband, a man that her family had arranged for her to marry. She ran away several times back to her family, but her father or a brother always returned her to her husband. She finally couldn’t take the mistreatment any more, and so she ran away one last time, and ended up with friends in a distant town. But her family tracked her down in only six hours, and dragged her back home. The following morning, her brother regained the family honour by decapitating his sister and paraded his prize through the streets. Townspeople who heard of what Saana had done congratulated him on saving the family honour.
These cases are prominent in Middle Eastern countries and they happen twice or thrice a day in Jordan, the country with the most reported honour killings. There is an average of 300 reported honour killings per year in Jordan, but the real number is thought to be much higher, around 400. A spokeswoman for the Jordanian Woman’s Union says that many honour killings go unrecorded because the family in question will kill and secretly bury the victim, then report them missing. These killings mostly go unpunished with few men receiving jail sentences.
The grounds for these killings are usually unjustified, with ‘crimes’ such as the woman being seen talking to a male not part of the family. Other ‘crimes’ include immodest behaviour or dress, flirtation, handholding, pre-marital relationships or even seeking a divorce. Even if a woman is raped, then she has ‘brought it upon herself’ and that she has brought dishonour upon her family for being promiscuous. Some men say that they had killed their wives because they dreamt that they had betrayed them. The courts in these countries say that if a man has been told that his wife is having an affair, then he has limited control over his actions, and therefore cannot be held responsible for murder.
Even if the female does by some chance win her court case for divorce, it is unlikely she will continue to live, as families would rather kill their daughter for bringing family indiscretions to the light and destroying the family honour. It is estimated that around 50 women are held in protective custody in Jordan at any one time, due to fear of death.
Honour killings are often carried out even when it is only a rumour that the female has dishonoured the family. They do not bother to sit down and discuss whether the rumour is a fact, they just take it into their own hands to bring back the family honour. It has been revealed that the local community is usually supportive of the murder.
In most cases, the family say that the ‘honour’ is talked about in the holy book, Qu’ran. But nowhere in the Qu’ran does it say that there is a need to kill a female for bringing dishonour to her family.
The offenders are usually a family member, a father, a brother or an uncle. The killings are usually very barbaric, involving the use of knives and axes. The general viewpoint is that the more violent the killing, the more honour they regain.
These pre-marital relationships are called karo-kari relationships, with the male being the karo and the female being the kari. Karo and kari translated loosely means ‘black man’ and ‘black woman’. Even when a kari is killed by a family member for her part in the relationship, their honour is not completely restored. It needs the death of the karo to completely bring back their honour. However, the karo can pay for his crime, in the form of money or another women for the husband, and nothing is thought more on the matter.
This scheme has stirred up cases where if a man has fallen in love with a girl from another family, he will call one of the men in her family a karo, and will even kill a girl from his own family to give evidence. Then, as payment, he would take the girl whom he loves. Often, men would use this scheme to make money.
Police hardly ever take a stand in this matter and don’t meddle with what they would call a private family honour matter. They think of themselves more as ‘morality judges’ as they are often employed by male members to find a female relative to bring them back from wherever they ran off to. They inevitably take the male’s side of the story, and therefore, the female’s death is almost never avenged. When a female lodges complaints with the police, they frequently advice them to go home and seek forgiveness and understanding from the family, and do not look into the facts of their complaint. The offender is rarely punished, and if he is, it is usually a punishment such as two months in jail.
The women in Middle Eastern countries are seen as the property of the prominent male figure in their household no matter what race, religion or age they are. Therefore if they commit a pre-marital sexual crime, its dishonour is reflected on the male and he has a just right to murder her. Men are the protectors of their chastity, as it is believed that the female has no control over her sexuality and cannot be trusted. The fact that they are seen as property has now put women in the position where they can be sold, bought or discarded. As the property of men, they are expected to stay chaste and to keep their virginity for the man they will marry, therefore their hymen is seen as a dowry of sorts. When they are married, they are expected to remain married, no matter how badly the husband may treat them. Many men in these countries have been brought up to believe that a woman is simply an instrument of sex and reproduction, therefore do not treat her with the respect that every female deserves.
The women who are victims in these killings come from a wide variety of backgrounds and are of all ages, from pre-pubescent girls to old grandmothers.
Women rarely have anywhere to run away to. They have been sheltered from the outside world and do not know of anywhere other than their own village. A woman who does run away however, becomes a target of abuse by strangers, as no woman should have the indecency to travel alone. They have little money to call their own and therefore cannot support themselves, and will rarely be able to find a job. There are far too few shelters for women in these countries. One of the few places a woman could go to is the home of a sardar, a religious man. But even then, she is far from safe, often being sexually abused by the man and having to spend her days as a slave for him. In these homes, she still has to abide by the traditional social roles.
Many women who choose to commit suicide then to be killed by a male member. 18-year-old Qaisrana Bibi committed suicide by lying down on the train tracks in front of an oncoming train when her parents arranged for her to marry a man more than three times her own age.
Any form of a women taking control of her own life has severe punishments. That is why any woman who seeks a divorce or marries a person of her own choice will generally be punished by a member of her family, and most likely killed.
There is no telling how long this practice has been around for, and there seems to be no sign of ceasing. Even now, as stories have leaked out to the international media, there are still hesitations to do something about the welfare of the women.
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Want to help these women? Please visit the International Campaign Against Honour Killings.
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