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| DATE | 2016-12-12 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Re: [Hangout-NYLXS] islam is your friend VI
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http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/07/19/486607329/honor-killings-are-a-global-problem-and-often-invisible
'Honor Killings' Are A Global Problem — And Often Invisible
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July 19, 20162:21 PM ET
Malaka Gharib 2016 square
Malaka Gharib
Twitter
Friends and family carry Pakistani social media celebrity Qandeel
Baloch's body at her funeral.
SS Mirza/AFP/Getty Images
Updated July 20, 4:42 p.m. ET. On Wednesday, Pakistan's ruling party
announced it plans to pass long-delayed legislation against honor
killings within weeks.
Slain Pakistani Social Media Star Remembered As Daring Feminist Rebel
July 18, 2016
Pakistani Social Media Star Strangled In Apparent 'Honor' Killing
The Two-Way
Pakistani Social Media Star Strangled In Apparent 'Honor' Killing
Our original post continues:
This past Friday, Pakistani social media star Qandeel Baloch was
murdered in an apparent "honor killing." Her brother Waseem Azeem
admitted that he strangled her to death because he disapproved of her
provocative social media presence in the socially conservative country.
The murder has brought attention to the issue of honor killings in
Pakistan, where an estimated 1,000 cases a year occur. But it's a global
concern as well. Honor killings happen when family members murder a
daughter, sister, mother or wife because they believe she has brought
shame to the family. The reasons range from refusing an arranged
marriage to owning a cellphone or even being a victim of rape.
"It's all just related to the idea that women are property, and you can
do what you like with your property," says Heather Barr, senior
researcher for women's rights at Human Rights Watch, in a Skype
interview from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The victims tend to be young. A survey of 214 female victims in 2010,
published in Middle East Quarterly, found that the average age was 23
years old. "Honor killings happen when a person is transitioning into
adulthood and trying to express their own views," she says. While the
vast majority are female, there are a small number of male victims —
typically a husband, boyfriend or fiancé whom the family disapproves of.
She Survived An 'Honor Killing': Oscar-Winning Documentary Airs Tonight
Goats and Soda
She Survived An 'Honor Killing': Oscar-Winning Documentary Airs Tonight
Part of the reason why the phenomenon continues is because it often goes
unpunished. In 2014, the human rights NGO International Humanist and
Ethical Union, which has representation at the U.N., submitted a
statement to the General Assembly noting that honor-related crimes are
rarely investigated, and the laws against them are rarely enforced in
many countries.
"Most of these cases will always be invisible," says Barr. "Covered up
and reported as suicides or disappearances."
If enforced, the sentences to the perpetrators are far less strict than
for equally violent crimes — and pardons can be easily arranged. In
Pakistan, for example, the simple act of forgiveness can absolve the
crime. In the Oscar-winning documentary film A Girl In The River: The
Price Of Forgiveness, Saba, 18, was pressured into forgiving her uncle
and father, who shot her and threw her in the river for secretly
eloping. As a result, they were both released from prison.
The other reason is society's acceptance of discrimination against
women. In a 2013 Cambridge University survey of 850 teenagers in Jordan,
a third believed that honor killings were "morally right." Support for
honor killing is far more likely among adolescent boys who have not
spent much time in school, according to the report. And in a 2009 survey
from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 68 percent of young
Iraqi men believed that killing a girl for dishonoring the family was
justifiable.
An estimated 5,000 honor killings are committed every year, mostly in
Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities, according to a 2000 report from the
UNFPA — the most recent compilation of data. But the number could in
fact be far higher. Barr says the killings are frequently not reported
to authorities by the victims' families.
While there may be more honor killings in the Middle East and Southeast
Asia than in other parts of the world, there is no single ethnic,
cultural or religious indicator of honor-based violence, reports the
Honor Based Violence Awareness Network, a digital resource center that
studies honor killings.
"It goes across cultural norms," says Christa Stewart, sexual violence
program manager at Equality Now, a women's and girls' rights
organization. "It's aimed at any woman who transgresses in a societal
framework — who asserts her own desire to marry on her own volition, not
have a marriage imposed upon her or chooses education." In the case of
Baloch, she says, her "transgression" was clear: posting social media
posts that defied cultural norms.
Such acts of violence take place in the Western world, too. According to
research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice in May 2015, an
estimated 23 to 27 honor killings occur in the U.S. per year, 13 in the
Netherlands and 10 to 12 in the U.K.
Enlarge this image
Qandeel Baloch at a press conference in Lahore, Pakistan, in June.
M Jameel/AP
In 2010, for example, Faleh Almaleki, an Iraqi immigrant living in
Phoenix, Ariz., ran over his 20-year-old daughter, Noor, with his Jeep.
She was becoming too "Westernized," he told the police, and brought him
dishonor by leaving an arranged marriage to an older cousin in Iraq. She
died in the hospital two weeks later; in 2011, the father was sentenced
to 34 years in prison.
"The law is paramount to changing dynamics for women," says Stewart. "It
shows there is equality in how women are viewed — that they're not
expendable or controllable."
The laws that allow families to get away with it are slowly changing. In
2009, Syria abolished a law that waived punishment for men who kill
female family members in the name of honor and replaced it with a
minimum two-year sentence. Critics at Human Rights Watch said in a
statement that "two years is better than nothing, but is hardly enough
for murder." In 2011, Lebanon repealed a criminal code provision that
permitted short sentences for family members found guilty or convicted
of an "honor crime." And on Wednesday, the Pakistani government, facing
mounting pressure in the wake of Baloch's murder, has announced that it
plans on passing long-delayed legislation against honor killings within
weeks. The law would close a loophole that allows family members to
pardon a killer.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of honor killings, says Barr of
Human Rights Watch, is confusing them with crimes committed in flagrante
delicto: "the idea that you walk in on your wife having sex with the
next door neighbor, and then kill them," she says. In some countries,
you would get a reduced sentence because you were so angry that you
weren't able to control your behavior, she continues. "But this is not
the way honor killings usually work."
Often, these murders are plotted with great deliberation, she explains.
Barr points to Baloch's brother Azeem as an example. In his confession
video, he said he planned the murder after she made headlines for
posting selfies on her Instagram account with a senior member of the
clergy four weeks ago. "It wasn't a shocking moment where the killer
wasn't able to control his emotions," she says. "It sounds like he
thought about it very carefully."
And some researchers believe the label for these acts is part of the
problem. "We shouldn't use the term 'honor killings' at all," she says.
"It's just an excuse for murder."
--
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