Honor Killings

Joe Katzman of Winds of Change pointed me to a post by Adil Farooq (MuslimPundit) on their group weblog. Adil writes about the practice of honor killings of women in the Muslim world.

In a remarkable book, Woman in the Muslim Unconscious, the Morroccan scholar Fatna Sabbah writes these daring words:

“I would like to say to the young men formed in our Muslim civilisation that it is highly improbable that they can value liberty – by which I mean, relating to another person as an act of free will, whether it be in bed, in erotic play, or in political debates in party cells or parliament – if they are not conscious of the political import of the hatred and degradation of women in this culture.”

I recalled these fine words when reading a recent article highlighting the continuing atrocities taking place in the name of patriarchal and tribal honour. It describes the intense anguish of a Ms. Khouri, whose newly-released book recalls how her childhood friend, Dalia, was brutally killed at the hands of her own father.

“At the age of 26, Dalia became a victim, both of the power of unbidden love and the determination of her culture to crush it. She could not help herself. Through elaborate deceptions with the complicity of Ms. Khouri she held secret, though chaste, meetings with a young Catholic man named Michael.

In retrospect, the outcome was inevitable. As with other unmarried women, it was the job of her brothers to monitor her movements like detectives.

The final chapters of Ms. Khouri’s book accelerate with grief and passion.

Dalia was stabbed 12 times in the chest, Ms. Khouri writes, and her father stood over her to be sure she was dead before calling an ambulance.

“I’ve cleansed my house,” he shouted when Ms. Khouri ran in through the door, just a block away from her own home. “I’ve cut the rotten part and brought honor back to my family name.”

“Tears flooded my eyes and I began wailing, as so many centuries of grieving Arab women had done before me,” Ms. Khouri writes.

Then, in language that went well beyond traditional grief, she shouted at him: “Dalia never shamed you, you shamed yourself. You’ve turned your home into a house of murder. The spilling of her innocent blood has stained your name, your hands and your soul forever.”

Ms. Khouri is truly courageous. That one would need to be in the first place is a sad and telling indication of just how rampant is the totalitarianism that she fights against. Ideally, an individual should not have to delve deep to find her inner courage to criticise those aspects of Muslim culture she disagrees with, but only a supreme confidence that the institutions of her nation will unapologetically defend her rights as an individual human being to the end. But this is not the state of affairs in Jordan at the present time, let alone in the wider Arab and Muslim world.

This is a terrible atrocity and it is our duty to condemn acts of violence against women in the strongest possible terms and try to do something to change the societies that do such dastardly acts. Honor killing is common in Pakistan as well. Here is the introduction of the 2001 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP: a private organization):

Women too faced acute difficulties. While violence against them continued to increase, with more ‘honour’ killings reported than during previous years, other factors too acted to deprive them of some of their most fundamental rights as citizens. In at least 20 districts of the NWFP, women were prevented, mainly by local orthodox forces and influential individuals, from casting their ballots in the local bodies process. It was clear that this could take place only with the connivance of administrations, which repeatedly failed to ensure women were able to exercise their right to vote.

Unfortunately, their report is not available online. Here are some of the highlights related to women’s issues:

• Honour killings seemed to be spreading to areas where they had not previously been known. The number of such killings increased with reports suggesting those responsible for them frequently escaped punishment.
• The allocation of 33 percent of seats for women in local councils brought more women than ever before into these bodies. However, it was uncertain how far they would succeed in highlighting problems faced by women.
• More reports came in of the harassment of women at places of work. The labour force comprised only 6 percent of women while only 8 percent of women workers held administrative or managerial posts.
• The mortality rate for mothers was found to be higher than had previously been estimated according to independent studies, and soared to 700 per 100,000 live births in some parts of the country. The official maternal mortality rate at 340 for every 100,000 live births was also amongst the highest in the world.
• Child marriages, sometimes linked to acute poverty, seemed to be on the rise.
• Cases of the mutilation of women and burning of their faces and bodies with acid increased.
• It was found that safe shelter was one of the most urgent requirements of many women.

Here is a recent report by Amnesty International:

Given that the prosecution of ‘honour’ killings is lax; that the law relating to murder is unable to ensure trial and conviction for ‘honour’ killings; and that members of the criminal justice system are prone to side with the perpetrators, people have tended to present other murders in the garb of ‘honour’ killings. Murderers may also murder a woman in addition to a man to create the impression that an ‘honour’ killing occurred. In May 2000, Naseem Bibi, pregnant with her first child, was pulled out of her bed and strangled in a field by her male relatives in Jhang district, Punjab. They earlier shot dead a man in another town over an unrelated issue. After the murder they were reportedly advised by the head of their clan, a school teacher, to kill Naseem Bibi as well, as a double murder in a supposed ‘honour’ context would lead to a lesser punishment in court than a murder of a man. The six men involved in the killing surrendered to police ‘with their heads held high’ according to The News, while local people donated money for the killers’ defence.

The possiblity of extracting compensation payment from a potential male victim of an ‘honour’ crime has added another layer of fake ‘honour’ crimes. Such fake ‘honour’ killings appear to be on the increase, based on ”pressing economic needs, increasing material greed and the desire to become rich overnight. … Husbands would declare a woman a kari [black woman, the one who brings shame] by levelling charges of illicit relations with a rich man in the village. The killer takes money to pardon the suspected man as well as gets rid of a wife or sister by killing her and her share of property is also saved.”(26) Federal Minister for Women Development Dr Attiya Inayatullah said that the custom of ”karo kari”, [“black man” and “black woman” those that dishonour others] in fact amounted to ”karobari”, a business transaction.(27)

The exact number of honour killings is impossible to ascertain as many such killings go unrecorded and unreported. The HRCP noted hundreds of ‘honour’ killings in different parts of the country in the year 2000, in addition to other forms of violence against women. Of 407 murders of women in Punjab province between January and June 2000, 168 were stated in the FIR to be motivated by ‘honour’ while another 109 were committed by close relatives of the women victims where police suspected an ‘honour’ killing. The Centre for Information and Research in Karachi reported 56 men and 73 women killed on grounds of ‘honour’ in the first six months of the year 2001. Most belonged to the middle or lower middle class. Of the reported cases, 28 women were killed by their husbands, 12 women by their brothers, 10 by their brothers-in-law, eight by cousins, 6 by other male relatives and 5 by their sons and the rest unidentified persons.

Official and NGO figures vary considerably: The HRCP office in Hyderabad in recorded a total of 280 cases of ‘honour’ crimes in Sindh in 2000, the 393 victims of the crimes including 236 women, whereas Sindh police claimed that 294 people, including 189 women had been killed in ‘honour’ crimes in the same period. In the first quarter of the year 2001, police claimed that 32 people including 24 women were killed in an ‘honour’ crimes context, whereas the HRCP spoke of 87 victims, including 62 women.

Media and human rights organizations in Pakistan speak of some three women murdered for ‘honour’ every day. The Chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Dr Shaheen Sardar Ali said in January 2001, ”the centuries-old problem [of violence against women] is based on traditions and customs involving the honour of rural, feudal and tribal families. It will not stop unless people stop thinking of women as their personal property.” Members of the NGO community agree: ”Women are treated as property and there is a perception that honour stems from the woman in the household. … General Musharraf may genuinely believe this shouldn’t happen but he had shown no clear will to stop it. He needs to change tradition and tradition is one of the hardest things to change.”(28)

Meanwhile the practice persists. Women are murdered on the merest allegation of an ‘illicit’ relationship, because of their perceived insubordination when they chose to marry a man of their choice or when they chose to divorce an abusive husband. Cases of ‘honour’ killings and domestic violence are reported with appalling regularity almost every day in newspapers in Pakistan. Most reports merely record that woman x was shot dead or hacked to death in place y on suspicion of an illicit relationship without giving any further details of the suffering and abuse hidden behind the recorded facts.

While the condemnation of ‘honour’ crimes by the present Government of Pakistan in the Convention on Human Rights and Human Dignity in April 2000 was clear and unequivocal, no immediate action followed to prove its commitment. Even well-documented cases of ‘honour’ killings were not pursued though such measures would have lent immediate and convincing weight to the verbal commitment. Instead, public statements by some government officials sounded like excuses for inaction. Then Governor of NWFP, Lt. General (retrd) Mohammad Shafiq, on International Women’s Day 2000 told a women’s delegation that his government would take strict action against any perpetrators who was pointed out to it but that reports of ‘honour’ killings were ‘unduly projected’. He said that he had received over 500 letters relating to the case of Jamila Lal but said that someone was exploiting the situation. ”I am thinking of writing a letter to Amnesty International to apprise them regarding [the] real situation. We are not so much bad people that we do nothing but slaughter our females. If there is some negligence on the part of police we will take strict action against them. But someone has to point out … we are also a part of this society. How can we allow the killing of women in the name of honour?” He pointed out that the inhabitants of the tribal areas had their own traditions and the government could not interfere in these.

Not only has Amnesty International not received any direct communication from the Governor, but there is also no indication that the case of Lal Jamila Mandokhel [described in Amnesty International 1999 report on ‘honour’ crimes] was subjected to any scrutiny. She had been shot dead in March 1999 after a jirga of Pathan tribesmen in Kurram Agency had found her ‘guilty’ of ‘dishonouring’ her tribe when she had been subjected to rape.

The case most thoroughly covered in the media in Pakistan, including in NWFP, relates to Samia Sarwar, a 29-year-old woman who was shot dead by her father’s driver on 6 April 1999 in a lawyer’s office in Lahore as she was seeking divorce from a severely abusive husband. The killing occurred in the presence of Samia Sarwar’s mother and uncle and was probably instigated by Samia Sarwar’s father. To date neither of them have been arrested. Samia Sarwar’s father is a prominent businessman and heads the Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province of which General Mohammad Shafiq was the Governor.(29)

Similarly, the case of Uzma Talpur in Sindh who is at risk of honour killing, was well-documented and is on record in the files of the Human Rights Advisor of the Government of Sindh. But no action was taken by Sindh authorities to ensure the recovery and safety of Uzma Talpur.(30)

You can also read a detailed report on honor killing in Pakistan by Amnesty International published in 1999 here.

Here is a BBC report about the Pakistani Senate refusing to condemn honor killings in 1999:

Pakistan’s upper house, the Senate, has rejected a resolution condemning the growing incidence of murder of women in the name of family honour.

The resolution was moved by the main opposition party of former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, but members from the highly conservative tribal region of the north-west frontier province prevailed upon the house to stop the move.

Recently, it became a major issue when a woman who had fled her home in the north-west frontier to avoid a forced marriage was shot down by a hired killer in the office of a human rights activist.

The incident sparked a bitter debate in the country, with human rights groups asking for a new and strict law to discourage the practice.

It was against this backdrop that the opposition Pakistan People’s Party wanted the Senate to pass a resolution to condemn the so-called “honour” killings of women.

But when it tried to move the resolution, the governing party members belonging to the conservative tribal region of the north-west frontier province put up a forceful opposition.

Much to the surprise of many, they were fully backed by a left-wing opposition group, Awami National Party, whose members also come from the same province.

This report refers to the Samia Sarwar case mentioned in the Amnesty International report. Samia was with a human rights lawyer Asma Jehangir. Conservatives in Pakistan call all kinds of names and have strange conspiracy theories about Asma Jehangir because of her work on women’s issues (she also runs a women’s shelter.)

Aside: Also note that the Awami National Party opposed the condemnation. They are Pashtun nationalists and are considered “progressive” in its meaning of the political left during the cold war years. They are also dominated by the family of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan and Frontier Gandhi.

I’ll end this post with a comment from Adil:

Those under the aegis of a modern, liberal nation must not therefore feel guilty in actively condemning such practices, identifying their roots, and calling for them to be purged forever. Our human rights and freedoms are far too important for us to ignore their stark absence elsewhere.