Honour Killings : The crimewave that shames the world

[DaRk WaVe]

The crimewave that shames the world​

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.

Last March, Munawar Gul shot and killed his 20-year-old sister, Saanga, in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, along with the man he suspected was having "illicit relations" with her, Aslam Khan.

In August of 2008, five women were buried alive for "honour crimes" in Baluchistan by armed tribesmen; three of them – Hameeda, Raheema and Fauzia – were teenagers who, after being beaten and shot, were thrown still alive into a ditch where they were covered with stones and earth. When the two older women, aged 45 and 38, protested, they suffered the same fate. The three younger women had tried to choose their own husbands. In the Pakistani parliament, the MP Israrullah Zehri referred to the murders as part of a "centuries-old tradition" which he would "continue to defend".

In December 2003, a 23-year-old woman in Multan, identified only as Afsheen, was murdered by her father because, after an unhappy arranged marriage, she ran off with a man called Hassan who was from a rival, feuding tribe. Her family was educated – they included civil servants, engineers and lawyers. "I gave her sleeping pills in a cup of tea and then strangled her with a dapatta [a long scarf, part of a woman's traditional dress]," her father confessed. He told the police: "Honour is the only thing a man has. I can still hear her screams, she was my favourite daughter. I want to destroy my hands and end my life." The family had found Afsheen with Hassan in Rawalpindi and promised she would not be harmed if she returned home. They were lying.

Zakir Hussain Shah slit the throat of his daughter Sabiha, 18, at Bara Kau in June 2002 because she had "dishonoured" her family. But under Pakistan's notorious qisas law, heirs have powers to pardon a murderer. In this case, Sabiha's mother and brother "pardoned" the father and he was freed. When a man killed his four sisters in Mardan in the same year, because they wanted a share of his inheritance, his mother "pardoned" him under the same law. In Sarghoda around the same time, a man opened fire on female members of his family, killing two of his daughters. Yet again, his wife – and several other daughters wounded by him – "pardoned" the murderer because they were his heirs.

Outrageously, **** is also used as a punishment for "honour" crimes. In Meerwala village in the Punjab in 2002, a tribal "jury" claimed that an 11-year-old boy from the Gujar tribe, Abdul Shakoor, had been walking unchaperoned with a 30-year-old woman from the Mastoi tribe, which "dishonoured" the Mastois. The tribal elders decided that to "return" honour to the group, the boy's 18-year-old sister, Mukhtaran Bibi, should be gang-raped. Her father, warned that all the female members of his family would be raped if he did not bring Mukhtar to them, dutifully brought his daughter to this unholy "jury". Four men, including one of the "jury", immediately dragged the girl to a hut and raped her while up to a hundred men laughed and cheered outside. She was then forced to walk naked through the village to her home. It took a week before the police even registered the crime – as a "complaint".

Acid attacks also play their part in "honour" crime punishments. The Independent itself gave wide coverage in 2001 to a Karachi man called Bilal Khar who poured acid over his wife Fakhra Yunus's face after she left him and returned to her mother's home in the red-light area of the city. The acid fused her lips, burned off her hair, melted her breasts and an ear, and turned her face into "a look of melted rubber". That same year, a 20-year-old woman called Hafiza was shot twice by her brother, Asadullah, in front of a dozen policemen outside a Quetta courthouse because she had refused to follow the tradition of marrying her dead husband's elder brother. She had then married another man, Fayyaz Moon, but police arrested the girl and brought her back to her family in Quetta on the pretext that the couple could formally marry there. But she was forced to make a claim that Fayaz had kidnapped and raped her. It was when she went to court to announce that her statement was made under pressure – and that she still regarded Fayaz as her husband – that Asadullah murdered her. He handed his pistol to a police constable who had witnessed the killing.

One of the most terrible murders in 1999 was that of a mentally retarded 16-year-old, Lal Jamilla Mandokhel, who was reportedly raped by a junior civil servant in Parachinar in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Her uncle filed a complaint with the police but handed Lal over to her tribe, whose elders decided she should be killed to preserve tribal "honour". She was shot dead in front of them. Arbab Khatoon was raped by three men in the Jacobabad district. She filed a complaint with the police. Seven hours later, she was murdered by relatives who claimed she had "dishonoured" them by reporting the crime.


Over 10 years ago, Pakistan's Human Rights Commission was recording "honour" killings at the rate of a thousand a year. But if Pakistan seems to have the worst track record of "honour" crimes – and we must remember that many countries falsely claim to have none – Turkey might run a close second. According to police figures between 2000 and 2006, a reported 480 women – 20 per cent of them between the ages of 19 and 25 – were killed in "honour" crimes and feuds. Other Turkish statistics, drawn up more than five years ago by women's groups, suggest that at least 200 girls and women are murdered every year for "honour". These figures are now regarded as a vast underestimate. Many took place in Kurdish areas of the country; an opinion poll found that 37 per cent of Diyabakir's citizens approved of killing a woman for an extramarital affair. Medine Mehmi, the girl who was buried alive, lived in the Kurdish town of Kahta.

In 2006, authorities in the Kurdish area of South-east Anatolia were recording that a woman tried to commit suicide every few weeks on the orders of her family. Others were stoned to death, shot, buried alive or strangled. A 17-year-old woman called Derya who fell in love with a boy at her school received a text message from her uncle on her mobile phone. It read: "You have blackened our name. Kill yourself and clean our shame or we will kill you first." Derya's aunt had been killed by her grandfather for an identical reason. Her brothers also sent text messages, sometimes 15 a day. Derya tried to carry out her family's wishes. She jumped into the Tigris river, tried to hang herself and slashed her wrists – all to no avail. Then she ran away to a women's shelter.

It took 13 years before Murat Kara, 40, admitted in 2007 that he had fired seven bullets into his younger sister after his widowed mother and uncles told him to kill her for eloping with her boyfriend. Before he murdered his sister in the Kurdish city of Dyabakir, neighbours had refused to talk to Murat Kara and the imam said he was disobeying the word of God if he did not kill his sister. So he became a murderer. Honour restored.

In his book Women In The Grip Of Tribal Customs, a Turkish journalist, Mehmet Farac, records the "honour" killing of five girls in the late 1990s in the province of Sanliurfa. Two of them – one was only 12 – had their throats slit in public squares, two others had tractors driven over them, the fifth was shot dead by her younger brother. One of the women who had her throat cut was called Sevda Gok. Her brothers held her arms down as her adolescent cousin cut her throat.

But the "honour" killing of women is not a uniquely Kurdish crime, even if it is committed in rural areas of the country. In 2001, Sait Kina stabbed his 13-year-old daughter to death for talking to boys in the street. He attacked her in the bathroom with an axe and a kitchen knife. When the police discovered her corpse, they found the girl's head had been so mutilated that the family had tied it together with a scarf. Sait Kina told the police: "I have fulfilled my duty."

In the same year, an Istanbul court reduced a sentence against three brothers from life imprisonment to between four and 12 years after they threw their sister to her death from a bridge after accusing her of being a prostitute. The court concluded that her behaviour had "provoked" the murder. For centuries, virginity tests have been considered a normal part of rural tradition before a woman's marriage. In 1998, when five young women attempted suicide before these tests, the Turkish family affairs minister defended mandated medical examinations for girls in foster homes.

British Kurdish Iraqi campaigner Aso Kamal, of the Doaa Network Against Violence, believes that between 1991 and 2007, 12,500 women were murdered for reasons of "honour" in the three Kurdish provinces of Iraq alone – 350 of them in the first seven months of 2007, for which there were only five convictions. Many women are ordered by their families to commit suicide by burning themselves with cooking oil. In Sulimaniya hospital in 2007, surgeons were treating many women for critical burns which could never have been caused by cooking "accidents" as the women claimed. One patient, Sirwa Hassan, was dying of 86 per cent burns. She was a Kurdish mother of three from a village near the Iranian border. In 2008, a medical officer in Sulimaniya told the AFP news agency that in May alone, 14 young women had been murdered for "honour" crimes in 10 days. In 2000, Kurdish authorities in Sulimaniya had decreed that "the killing or abuse of women under the pretext of cleansing 'shame' is not considered to be a mitigating excuse". The courts, they said, could not apply an old 1969 law "to reduce the penalty of the perpetrator". The new law, of course, made no difference.

But again, in Iraq, it is not only Kurds who believe in "honour" killings. In Tikrit, a young woman in the local prison sent a letter to her brother in 2008, telling him that she had become pregnant after being raped by a prison guard. The brother was permitted to visit the prison, walked into the cell where his now visibly pregnant sister was held, and shot her dead to spare his family "dishonour". The mortuary in Baghdad took DNA samples from the woman's foetus and also from guards at the Tikrit prison. The rapist was a police lieutenant-colonel. The reason for the woman's imprisonment was unclear. One report said the colonel's family had "paid off" the woman's relatives to escape punishment.

In Basra in 2008, police were reporting that 15 women a month were being murdered for breaching "Islamic dress codes". One 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was beaten to death by her father two years ago because she had become infatuated with a British soldier. Another, Shawbo Ali Rauf, 19, was taken by her family to a picnic in Dokan and shot seven times because they had found an unfamiliar number on her mobile phone.

In Nineveh, Du'a Khalil Aswad was 17 when she was stoned to death by a mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a man outside her tribe.

In Jordan, women's organisations say that per capita, the Christian minority in this country of just over five million people are involved in more "honour" killings than Muslims – often because Christian women want to marry Muslim men. But the Christian community is loath to discuss its crimes and the majority of known cases of murder are committed by Muslims. Their stories are wearily and sickeningly familiar. Here is Sirhan in 1999, boasting of the efficiency with which he killed his young sister, Suzanne. Three days after the 16-year-old had told police she had been raped, Sirhan shot her in the head four times. "She committed a mistake, even if it was against her will," he said. "Anyway, it's better to have one person die than to have the whole family die of shame." Since then, a deeply distressing pageant of "honour" crimes has been revealed to the Jordanian public, condemned by the royal family and slowly countered with ever tougher criminal penalties by the courts.

Yet in 2001, we find a 22-year-old Jordanian man strangling his 17-year-old married sister – the 12th murder of its kind in seven months – because he suspected her of having an affair. Her husband lived in Saudi Arabia. In 2002, Souad Mahmoud strangled his own sister for the same reason. She had been forced to marry her lover – but when the family found out she had been pregnant before her wedding, they decided to execute her.

In 2005, three Jordanians stabbed their 22-year-old married sister to death for taking a lover. After witnessing the man enter her home, the brothers stormed into the house and killed her. They did not harm her lover.

By March 2008, the Jordanian courts were still treating "honour" killings leniently. That month, the Jordanian Criminal Court sentenced two men for killing close female relatives "in a fit of fury" to a mere six months and three months in prison. In the first case, a husband had found a man in his home with his wife and suspected she was having an affair. In the second, a man shot dead his 29-year-old married sister for leaving home without her husband's consent and "talking to other men on her mobile phone". In 2009, a Jordanian man confessed to stabbing his pregnant sister to death because she had moved back to her family after an argument with her husband; the brother believed she was "seeing other men".

And so it goes on. Three men in Amman stabbing their 40-year-old divorced sister 15 times last year for taking a lover; a Jordanian man charged with stabbing to death his daughter, 22, with a sword because she was pregnant outside wedlock. Many of the Jordanian families were originally Palestinian. Nine months ago, a Palestinian stabbed his married sister to death because of her "bad behaviour". But last month, the Amman criminal court sentenced another sister-killer to 10 years in prison, rejecting his claim of an "honour" killing – but only because there were no witnesses to his claim that she had committed adultery.

In "Palestine" itself, Human Rights Watch has long blamed the Palestinian police and justice system for the near-total failure to protect women in Gaza and the West Bank from "honour" killings. Take, for example, the 17-year-old girl who was strangled by her older brother in 2005 for becoming pregnant – by her own father.

He was present during her murder. She had earlier reported her father to the police. They neither arrested nor interrogated him. In the same year, masked Hamas gunmen shot dead a 20-year-old, Yusra Azzami, for "immoral behaviour" as she spent a day out with her fiancée. Azzami was a Hamas member, her husband-to-be a member of Fatah. Hamas tried to apologise and called the dead woman a "martyr" – to the outrage of her family. Yet only last year, long after Hamas won the Palestinian elections and took over the Gaza Strip, a Gaza man was detained for bludgeoning his daughter to death with an iron chain because he discovered she owned a mobile phone on which he feared she was talking to a man outside the family. He was later released.

Even in liberal Lebanon, there are occasional "honour" killings, the most notorious that of a 31-year-old woman, Mona Kaham, whose father entered her bedroom and cut her throat after learning she had been made pregnant by her cousin. He walked to the police station in Roueiss in the southern suburbs of Beirut with the knife still in his hand. "My conscience is clear," he told the police. "I have killed to clean my honour." Unsurprisingly, a public opinion poll showed that 90.7 per cent of the Lebanese public opposed "honour" crimes. Of the few who approved of them, several believed that it helped to limit interreligious marriage.

Syria reflects the pattern of Lebanon. While civil rights groups are demanding a stiffening of the laws against women-killers, government legislation only raised the term of imprisonment for men who kill female relatives for extramarital *** to two years. Among the most recent cases was that of Lubna, a 17-year-old living in Homs, murdered by her family because she fled to her sister's house after refusing to marry a man they had chosen for her. They also believed – wrongly – that she was no longer a virgin.

Tribal feuds often provoke "honour" killings in Iran and Afghanistan. In Iran, for example, a governor's official in the ethnic Arab province of Khuzestan stated in 2003 that 45 young women under the age of 20 had been murdered in "honour" killings in just two months, none of which brought convictions. All were slaughtered because of the girl's refusal to agree to an arranged marriage, failing to abide by Islamic dress code or suspected of having contacts with men outside the family.

Through the dark veil of Afghanistan's village punishments, we glimpse just occasionally the terror of teenage executions. When Siddiqa, who was only 19, and her 25-year-old fiancé Khayyam were brought before a Taliban-approved religious court in Kunduz province this month, their last words were: "We love each other, no matter what happens." In the bazaar at Mulla Quli, a crowd – including members of both families – stoned to death first Siddiqa, then Khayyam.

A week earlier, a woman identified as Bibi Sanubar, a pregnant widow, was lashed a hundred times and then shot in the head by a Taliban commander. In April of last year, Taliban gunmen executed by firing squad a man and a girl in Nimruz for eloping when the young woman was already engaged to someone else. History may never disclose how many hundreds of women – and men – have suffered a similar fates at the hands of deeply traditional village families or the Taliban.

But the contagion of "honour" crimes has spread across the globe, including acid attacks on women in Bangladesh for refusing marriages. In one of the most terrible Hindu "honour" killings in India this year, an engaged couple, Yogesh Kumar and Asha Saini, were murdered by the 19-year-old bride-to-be's family because her fiancée was of lower caste. They were apparently tied up and electrocuted to death.

A similar fate awaited 18-year-old Vishal Sharma, a Hindu Brahmin, who wanted to marry Sonu Singh, a 17- year-old Jat – an "inferior" caste which is usually Muslim. The couple were hanged and their bodies burned in Uttar Pradesh. Three years earlier, a New Delhi court had sentenced to death five men for killing another couple who were of the same sub-caste, which in the eyes of the local "caste council" made them brother and sister.

In Chechnya, Russia's chosen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been positively encouraging men to kill for "honour". When seven murdered women were found in Grozny, shot in the head and chest, Kadyrov announced – without any proof, but with obvious approval – that they had been killed for living "an immoral life". Commenting on a report that a Chechen girl had called the police to complain of her abusive father, he suggested the man should be able to murder his daughter. "... if he doesn't kill her, what kind of man is he? He brings shame on himself!"

And so to the "West", as we like to call it, where immigrant families have sometimes brought amid their baggage the cruel traditions of their home villages: an Azeri immigrant charged in St Petersburg for hiring hitmen to kill his daughter because she "flouted national tradition" by wearing a miniskirt; near the Belgian city of Charleroi, Sadia Sheikh shot dead by her brother, Moussafa, because she refused to marry a Pakistani man chosen by her family; in the suburbs of Toronto, Kamikar Kaur Dhillon slashes his Punjabi daughter-in-law, Amandeep, across the throat because she wants to leave her arranged marriage, perhaps for another man. He told Canadian police that her separation would "disgrace the family name".

And, of course, we should perhaps end this catalogue of crime in Britain, where only in the past few years have we ourselves woken to the reality of "honour" crimes; of Surjit Athwal, a Punjabi Sikh woman murdered on the orders of her London-based mother-in-law for trying to escape a violent marriage; of 15-year-old Tulay Goren, a Turkish Kurd from north London, tortured and murdered by her Shia Muslim father because she wished to marry a Sunni Muslim man; of Heshu Yones, 16, stabbed to death by her father in 2005 for going out with a Christian boy; of Caneze Riaz, burned alive by her husband in Accrington, along with their four children – the youngest 10 years old – because of their "Western ways". Mohamed Riaz was a Muslim Pakistani from the North-West Frontier Province. He died of burns two days after the murders.

Scotland Yard long ago admitted it would have to review over a hundred deaths, some going back more than a decade, which now appear to have been "honour" killings.

Robert Fisk: The crimewave that shames the world - Robert Fisk, Commentators - The Independent

 

[Eminem]

A shameful or you can say painful truth of our communities.Our governments needs to impliment strict laws against these evils.

 

[merajahmed]

I don't find any single politician from India, Pakistan or any other middle east countries voice against this kind of honour killings. They just look for their VOTE BANK POLITICS even some of they support this kind of killings

 

[Ganga]

In Saudi a princess was shot for falling in love with a man.If i am not wrong her name was Mishaal.

 

[Nav]

The Quran condemning those who practiced female infanticide:
"And when the news of (the birth of) a female (child) is brought to any of them, his face becomes dark, and he is filled with inward grief! He hides himself from the people because of the evil of that where of he has been informed. Shall he keep her with dishonor or bury her in the earth? Certainly, evil is their decision."(An-Nahl 16:58-59)
The Quran mentions:
"And when the female (infant) buried alive (as the pagan Arabs used to do)shall be questioned. For what sin she was killed? (At-Takwir 81:8-9)
Who alone knows what rights are best for our female natures. Allah (SWT) says in the Quran:
"O You who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will, and you should not treat them with harshness, that you may take away part of the Mahr (bridal-money given by the husband to his wife at time of marriage) you have given them, unless they commit open illegal sexual intercourse. And live with them honorably. If you dislike them, it may be that you dislike a thing and Allah brings through it a great deal of good." (An-Nisa 4:19)

 

[sparklingway]

Robert Fisk: Relatives with blood on their hands

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​

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

"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 fiancé'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."

Most "honour" crimes are committed by the poor and deprived. But 29-year-old Samia was the daughter of Haj Ghulam Sarwar, a rich man and head of the Peshawar chamber of commerce in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Her mother was a doctor. Samia was married to her aunt's son. The couple had two children, the elder nine years old.

She claimed that her husband beat her constantly and wanted to leave home, and her father invited her to return to her family home – on the condition that she did not remarry. But Samia fell in love with an army officer, Nadir, told her parents about him and asked them to secure a divorce.

Mr Sarwar refused, on the grounds that this would split the family. Then Samia eloped with Nadir. Threatened by the father, she fled to Lahore – and to Ms Jilani's shelter. Under the rules of the Dastak shelter, Samia's mother was told her daughter was in Lahore.

"First an official came to see me from the North West Frontier Province," Ms Jilani recalls. "He was a scoundrel. He demanded that Samia return to her family. I said, 'That's her decision'. Her father came to Lahore. I told Samia that he wanted to see her. Her hands were trembling – like this." And here Ms Jalani shakes her hands over her desk. "She told me, 'Madam, they will kill me, they will kill me.' You learn to believe what these women say. I believed her. I always tell my colleagues: never think the woman is exaggerating her fears."

Samia's parents appointed one of Ms Jilani's legal colleagues to represent them to plead for a meeting with their daughter. Samia refused. Then her mother called by phone, offering to give her divorce papers so she could marry Nadir. Samia – fatally, as it turned out – trusted her mother's word. According to Ms Jilani, Samia told her: "I will see my mother – but she must come alone. I will only meet her in your presence." The meeting was set for mid-afternoon in the lawyer's office. The armed guard was told to ensure nobody arrived with a weapon.

"I was sitting here and she was sitting there, where you are. We were chatting about her case. The office staff were leaving – it was around 4pm – and suddenly the door opened and this woman entered with a man. I didn't recognise the man. Someone from my office brought them both. But there had been a security lapse as the office was closing. The woman said, 'This is my driver.' I looked up and said, 'You can send your driver away now – come and sit down.'

"Samia didn't apprehend any danger. She said 'Salaam aleikum' to her mother. And just as she said that, this man whipped out a pistol – in a split second, just as Samia was greeting her mother – and shot her. I was still sitting down and I felt the bullet go past my ear. He shot Samia in the head the first time, then in the stomach. I saw her fall down." Ms Jilani says she collapsed in shock but managed to press the security alarm.

"I could see Samia was dead – she had a hole in her head and her brains were coming out. Some of my staff came. But the mother, she just looked at her daughter. Then she turned round and walked out. She and the man with the pistol went to the door, and I shouted, 'Call the police.' The man was holding another of my lawyers at gunpoint. Then he shot at the office guard, who fired back. The gunman was carrying an ID card which said he was an official driver in the North West Frontier Province."

To this day, Ms Jilani is overwhelmed not just by the failure of security in her office – it was presumably the armed guard who let the uncle in – but the growing suspicion that the police were somehow involved. "When I called the Inspector General," she says, "he said he'd be here in a minute. Then after 10 minutes, the senior superintendent of police was here. The mother first went to a local hotel and then ran away to Peshawar. Within an hour, the police knew who she was – but they let her leave the city. The police must have known. In fact, the only police officer who tried to investigate this was transferred to another city."

Ms Jilani went to court – "an ideal case for prosecution," she thought – but discussions dragged on for two years. Samia's family even claimed that Ms Jilani had abducted the girl and had her killed. Then the police accepted that her mother was not present in the lawyer's office – a palpable untruth. Finally, the mother and father and the man who was still Samia's husband filed a "compromise" on behalf of all their children, forgiving the killing. The judge accepted the compromise.

The family later claimed Samia's body from the police station and took it to Peshawar for burial. Two days after her murder, the local Women's Action Group, said they would hold prayers for Samia, even without her body. "I asked Maulavi Farouq Mawdadi to say the prayers," Ms Jilani remembers, "and there were up to 300 women there, and Mawdadi conducted our prayers on the Lahore Mall. There were many police watching us – but then some of the policewomen and a few policemen joined in our prayers. This was a turning point.

"Then what happens? The court said there was a 'technical problem' with my appeal. I went right up to the Supreme Court but they said I was a pro formal complainant. They said, 'You are not an aggrieved party.' It became a burning issue. There was a resolution put before the Pakistan Senate condemning honour killings."

So what did happen? The resolution of Senator Syed Iqbal Haider, of the Pakistan People's Party, was supported by 19 of his colleagues. But the rest of the house opposed the resolution. Mr Haider was himself threatened and Ms Jilani received many death threats from Islamist groups.

Nadir, the man Samia wished to marry, was dismissed from the Pakistan army for "lowering morale". He is now married with two children and is believed to be living in Britain.

Ms Jilani has been told that Samia's mother has "gone mad with grief and guilt". When I visited Peshawar and asked to visit Samia's grave, I was told that its location was "unknown".

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinio...atives-with-blood-on-their-hands-2073142.html

 

[sparklingway]

Samia Sarwar is alive in the memory of anybody who has ever read the story. Nadir, I have listened to a video interview as well, was discharged (he was a Captain) in violation of all existing service laws. Ghulam Sarwar lead a PCCI protest against Hina Jilani and her "outrageous behaviour". Iqbal Haider was shouted upon by other Senators and only Aitzaz Ahsan was teh other notable one who came to his rescue. Ajmal Khattak supported her murder as "upholding Pashtun honour" and his resolution was supported by 60 other Senators. Since Jilani was not an aggrieved party, she could not file an appeal. Her parents forgave the killer - they had themselves hired - under the notorious Qisas and Diyat laws - much like hundreds of other family killings are forgiven. In one case (Muhammad Ishaq vs State), the murderer was forgiven only 14 hours after the murder took place as the parents appeared before the magistrate when the challan was presented and forgave their hired assassin "in the name of Allah". There are dozens after dozens of other family-relative killings, where heirs "forgive" their own relatives so as not to send them to the gallows (most famous ones being where brother kills sister over property/other matters and parents forgive him since they do not want to lose another child). Legally, under the Hanafi school of thought, it is not permissible for a Judge to give a sentence if someone has been forgiven "in the name of Allah". If a compromise deed in the form of blood money or badl-i-sulh has been arranged, then the Judge has the option to sentence under "fasad fil arz" for heinous and violent murders to send a message to the community. However, honour killings have always involved "in the name of Allah" compromises where judges cannot do anything.

In other cases, where the brothers did the act without the parents consent or some uncle did it, there has evolved a legalese for not condemning honour crimes in the form of a 1984 judgment's description of a "sudden ad grave provocation". This has been upheld by the SC post '91 (after Qisas and Diyat Laws were promulgated). That is a complex legal matter to deal with, however Qisas and Diyat Laws are clear cut destruction of criminal justice allowing honour crimes to happen day after day with killers receiving absolutely no punishment at all.

 

[Nav]

Allah (SWT) says in the Quran:
"O mankind! Be dutiful to your Lord, Who created you from a single person (Adam), and from him (Adam) He created his wife (Eve), and from them both He created many men and women and fear Allah through Whom you demand your mutual (rights), and (do not cut the relations of) the wombs (kinship). Surely, Allah is Ever and All-Watcher over you." (Al-Nisa 4:1)
And in the words of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW),
"Assuredly, women are the twin halves of men." (Sahih reported by Abu-Dawud (RA).
Full Artical can be found below:
Women's Rights In Islam

 

[Gentle Typhoon]

Delete 10chars

 

[gubbi]

Wow. Just wow! Reading that list by Dark Wave fills one up with such disgust, that its really hard to even try to understand what kind of mindset encourages such behavior! Even animals show compassion.

Where did humans go wrong?

Looking at the places where such incidents are prevalent, its very clear that something is really wrong with these people. Take to eg, China, Japan - countries which are geographically close to those areas and yet they dont seem to have that concept of "honor killings"! Take UK, Europe - all these are centuries old civilizations and traditions and yet THEY dont have "honor killings". Then why is it that such concepts exist only in those particular lands? The very lands where 3 of the largest religions took birth! Where "Prophets" roamed teaching people the rightful ways!

Where did humans go wrong?

One thing is certain, the people who inhabit these lands and who espouse such practices are beneath normal human beings. Not all humans are equal, this is proof that there is disparity in humans and some human beings are beneath others - based on their thinking capability. No wonder all those areas are such shyte holes, so under developed - not that they dont deserve, they are simply incapable to progress!

Fvcking sick fvcks!

 

[Eminem]

I don't find any single politician from India, Pakistan or any other middle east countries voice against this kind of honour killings. They just look for their VOTE BANK POLITICS even some of they support this kind of killings

Are you crazy or what.Not a single political party supports this kinds of honour killing in india.Even our p.m said that "we are working on new kind of strict laws,which we are going implement".

Pls post something with facts not by stupidity.

 

[Tuahaa]

Nothing changed in '400' years, its shame.



Agree with him, The two sons of Guru Gobind, Zorawar (9 years old) and Fateh (7 years old) were bricked up alive within a wall under Aurangzeb's orders, by the Mughal governor of Sarhind when boys refused to convert to Islam.

Its not 'recent' crimewave, Mughals changed Sub Continent forever.

I don't understand how everyone picks out things that certain Muslims did and used it to represent everyone. All of this has happened in other religions too, and atrocities are always committed everyday. Like I said earlier, the media always targets what some Muslims do! Never are these verses of the Qur'an shown on T.V;

Because of that, We decreed upon the Children of Israel that whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And whoever saves one - it is as if he had saved mankind entirely. And our messengers had certainly come to them with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors. Surah Maidah, Verse 32

Contrarily, media then quotes Qur'anic verses out of context to try and show that Islam orders killings.

If these boys died in the name of Islam, does it make the ones who ordered their deaths Muslims?

I have said this many times. Please do not rely on misconceptions and the media to give you an accurate summary of our beliefs.

Thanks

 

[DaRk WaVe]

No laws no punishment can change & stop the misery that is been inflicted on women in the name of fake honor, that destroys lives of women as well as the lives of other family members

This list can easily give a normal human shivers, This thing will only change & stop when humans will act like humans & humanity will not fail itself in the name of fake honor. This male superiority syndrome & My thou great Penis mentality needs to end

& the most disgusting part is that people justify & even deny the existence of this problem, I don't know how sick you can be when you are going to justify murder of daughter by his own father just because she was not wearing Hijab

http://www.defence.pk/forums/members-club/62157-i-killed-my-daughter-my-hands.html

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Man kills wife, three daughters

A man slaughtered his wife and three young daughters over a domestic dispute in Muridke on Tuesday.

The man, who has been identified as Shaukat, first gave intoxicated syrup to his wife and daughters. Once they lost consciousness, he murdered them.

However, he did not kill his youngest son and took him away when he fled.

Shaukat is said to have committed this act because he was not happy with the marriage of his 11-year-old daughter Samina.

Man kills wife, three daughters – The Express Tribune

 

[DaRk WaVe]

Man slaughters women of family for their ‘arrogance’​

MURIDKE: A man has confessed to slaughtering his three daughters and wife after the latter contracted the marriage of their oldest daughter against his will.

According to the police, Pindi Machiyaan resident Shaukat Ali killed his family in their sleep. Shaukat drugged his family at dinner and when Zunera (5), Humaira (7), Sumera (10) and his wife Amina fell unconcious he took a sharp knife and slit their throats. Shaukat then dragged the bodies into the street and left them outside his house as he composed a note for the police that he left on his house door.

Police officials said that they found a notice on the door that stated “I am ashamed of my wife who was stubborn and arrogant.

My daughters could have turned out like her. I have killed them so that I would not have to suffer the humiliation of their dishonourable actions. I am a man of honour and I will turn myself over to the police for their murder.”

Muridke station house officer (SHO) Nemat Gujjar said that Shaukat had confessed to the crime. “We were called in by locals who said they saw a stream of blood flowing into the road from his house,” he said.

“I saw a stream of blood flowing into the road. When I followed it to the corner of the street, I saw four bodies piled on top of each other,” said Pindi Maachiyaan resident Ataa Khan. “I called the police immediately as other people began to gather around the house and we saw the notice,” he said, adding that Shaukat’s house was empty. “He must have left with his son. His other two sons are older and are no longer living with him. They work at a factory in a neighbouring city ,” a neighbour Sohail said.

Sohail said that two days ago his wife mentioned that Shaukat’s wife Amina arranged a wedding match for her 12-year-old daughter Samina on the recommendation of her brothers Shahbaz and Ilyas. “She told me that Shaukat had disapproved the match.

Amina said she would go to the neighbouring village and contract the marriage without his knowledge,” he said. Police officials said that Amina had married Samina to a relative in the Muqta Village in Sheikhupura. SHO Gujjar said that during his confession, Shaukat’s stated that he blamed his wife’s brothers for ‘provoking him’.

“He has said that he will hand himself over to the police but he is nowhere to be found. He took most of his belongings from his house,” he said, adding that Shaukat had escaped with his four-year-old son Mubasshir.

Police officials recovered the bodies from the street corner and shifted them to the hospital for autopsy. SHO Gujjar said that an investigation had already been initiated. Amina’s brother Shahbaz filed a case against Shaukat with the Muridke police. “Shaukat has wiped out half of his family simply because he disapproved of our choice of husband for our niece. He deserves to be killed for what he has done,” Shahbaz said.

Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif has taken notice of the horrific murders and said that police should arrest the man responsible as soon as possible.

Man slaughters women of family for their ?arrogance? – The Express Tribune