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The perceived dishonor is normally the result of the following behaviors, or the suspicion of such behaviors: (a) utilizing dress codes unacceptable to the family/community, (b) wanting to terminate or prevent an arranged marriage or desiring to marry by own choice, or (c) engaging in certain sexual acts, including those with the opposite or same sex. Such killings or attempted killings occur due to the belief that the honor of a family, clan, or community justifies killing a person whose behavior is perceived to have dishonored the clan, family, or community.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor-killing victims may be as high as 5,000. Many women's groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect the victims are at least four times more.
The 1075 BC Assyrian law of the civilization of Mesopotamia stated that the father of a defiled virgin shall punish his daughter however he saw fit.
In the Bible, the Book of Genesis (38:24), Judah demanded for the burning of his daughter-in-law Tamar, whom he was told to be pregnant via harlotry; this view is then supported in Book of Leviticus (21:9). Other capital offenses include "cursing" one's parents (Leviticus 20:9) and worshiping other gods (Deuteronomy 13:7-12).
Matthew Goldstein has noted that honor killings were encouraged in ancient Rome, where male family members who did not take actions against the female adulterers in their family were "actively persecuted".
Human Rights Watch defines "honor killings" as follows:
Honor crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, committed by male family members against female family members, who are held to have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce — even from an abusive husband — or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a way that "dishonors" her family is sufficient to trigger an attack on her life.
The loose term honor killing applies to killing of both males and females in cultures that practice it. For example, during the year 2002 in Pakistan, it is estimated that 245 women and 137 men were killed in the name of Karo-kari in Sindh. These killings target women and men who choose to have relationships outside of their family's tribal affiliation and/or religious community.
Some women who bridge social divides, publicly engage other communities, or adopt some of the customs or the religion of an outside group may thus also be attacked. In countries that receive immigration, some otherwise low-status immigrant men and boys have asserted their dominant patriarchal status by inflicting honor killings on women family members who have participated in public life, for example in feminist and integration politics. Women in the family tend to support the honor killing of one of their own, agreeing that the family is the property and asset of men and boys. Alternatively, matriarchs may be motivated not by personal belief in the misogynistic ideology of women as property, but rather by pragmatic calculations. Sometimes a mother may support an honor killing of an "offending" female family member in order to preserve the honor of other female family members since many men in these societies will refuse to marry the sister of a "shamed" female whom the family has not chosen to punish, thereby "purifying" the family name by murdering the suspected female.
There is some evidence that homosexuality can also be perceived as grounds for honor killing by relatives. In one case, a gay Jordanian man was shot and wounded by his brother. In another case, a homosexual Turkish student, Ahmet Yildiz, was shot outside a cafe and later died in the hospital. Sociologists have called this Turkey's first publicized gay honor killing.
Men can also be the victims of honour killings.
The 18-year old unwed Ayat al-Akhras, the suicide bomber of a Jerusalem supermarket on 29 Mar 2002, was pregnant according to Israeli police report.
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There is a strong positive correlation between violence against women, and women's social power and equality; and a baseline of development, associated with access to basic resources, health care, and human capital, such as literacy - as research by Richard G. Wilkinson shows. In a male-dominated society, there is more inequality between men, and women lose out not just physically and economically, but crucially because men who feel subordinated will often try to regain a sense of their authority in turn by excessive subordination of those below them, i.e. women. He says that in male-dominated societies, both men and women suffer more violence, and worse health.
According to Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, the practice "goes across cultures and across religions."
Hatun Sürücü's brother was convicted of murder and jailed for nine years and three months by a German court in 2006.
In March 2009, Turkish immigrant Gülsüm S. was killed for a relationship outside her family's plan for an arranged marriage.
Every year in the UK, a dozen women are victims of honor killings, occurring almost exclusively to date within Asian and Middle Eastern families, and often cases are unresolved due to the unwillingness of family, relatives and communities to testify. A 2006 BBC poll for the Asian network in the UK found that 1 in 10 of the 500 young Asians polled said that they could condone the murder of someone who dishonored their family. In the UK, in December 2005, Nazir Afzal, Director, west London, of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, stated that the United Kingdom has seen "at least a dozen honour killings" between 2004 and 2005. While precise figures do not exist for the perpetrators' cultural backgrounds, Diana Nammi of the UK's Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation is reported to have said: "about two-thirds are Muslim. Yet they can also be Hindu, Sikh and even eastern European."
Another well known case was of Heshu Yones, who was stabbed to death by her father in London in 2002, when her family heard a love song dedicated to her and suspected she had a boyfriend. Another girl suffered a similar fate in Turkey. In Sweden, a 26-year-old Kurdish woman Fadime Şahindal was murdered by her father in 2002.
In most recent cases, a 16-year-old girl had been buried alive by relatives for befriending boys in Southeast Turkey; her corpse was only found 40 days after she went missing.
A June 2008 report by the Turkish Prime Ministry's Human Rights Directorate, says that in Istanbul alone, there is one honor killing every week; and reports over 1,000 during the last five years. It adds that metropolitan cities are the location of many of these, due to the growing Kurdish immigration to these cities from the East. In 2009, a Turkish news agency reported that an honor killing had occurred to a 2-day old infant boy who was born out of wedlock. The maternal grandmother of the infant, along with six other persons including a doctor who had reportedly accepted a bribe to not report the birth, were arrested. The grandmother is suspected of fatally suffocating the infant. The child's mother, 25, was also arrested; she stated that her family had made the decision to kill the child.
Ahmet Yildiz, 26, a physics student who represented his country at an international gay gathering in the United States in 2008, was shot leaving a cafe in Istanbul. It is believed Yildiz was the victim of the country's first gay honour killing.
There are no exact official numbers about honour killings in Lebanon as many honour killings there are arranged to look like accidents. It is believed that 40-50 women are killed each year in Lebanon in honour related killings. A 2007 report by Amnesty claimed that the Lebanese media in 2001 reported 2-3 honour killings per month in Lebanon although the number is believed by lawyers to be higher.
In the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, it is believed that 3-4 women per month are killed in honour killings. Most of the honour killings are carried out by villagers and is extremely rare in the Palestinian cities and larger towns. The Palestinian authority rules with Jordanian law which gives men reduced punishment for killing a female relative if she has brought dishonour to the family. Due to Palestinian protests, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, promised to change the discrimatory law by the year 2010. He has not yet fulfilled his promise, however, and the law is still valid. According to UNICEF, two-thirds of all murders in the Palestinian territories are honor killings.
In Israel, honor killings account for the majority of homicides among [[Arab-Israelis|Arab citizens]].
As many as 133 women were killed in the Iraqi city of Basra alone in 2006—79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Amnesty International claims honor killings are also conducted by armed groups, not the government, upon politically active women and those who did not follow a strict dress code, as well as women who are perceived as human rights defenders.
Jordan, considered one of the most liberal countries in the Middle East still witnesses instances of honor killings. In Jordan there is minimal gender discrimination and women are permitted to vote, but men receive reduced sentences for killing their wives or female family members if they have brought dishonor to their family. Families often have sons who are considered minors, under the age of 18, to commit the honor killings. A loophole in the juvenile law allows minors to serve time in a juvenile detention center and they are released with a clean criminal record at the age of 18. Rana Husseini, a leading journalist on the topic of honor killings, states that “under the existing law, people found guilty of committing honor killings often receive sentences as light as six months in prison”.
There has been much outcry in Jordan for the amendments of Article 340 and 98. In 1999, King Abdullah created a council to review the gender inequalities in the country. The Council returned with a recommendation to repeal Article 340. “[T]he cabinet approved the recommendation, the measure was presented to parliament twice in November 1999 and January 2000 and in both cases, though approved by the upper house, it failed to pass the elected lower house”.
In the United Kingdom, honour killing is frequent in the Pakistani diaspora and within the Muslim community, with approximately 10-12 cases occurring each year. Example cases include Tulay Goren, (Shia Muslim) Samaira Nazir (Pakistani Muslim), and Heshu Yones (Kurdish Muslim)
The Indian state of Punjab also is notorious for honour killings. As per data compiled by the Punjab Police, 34 honour killings have been reported in the state between 2008 and 2010: 10 in 2008, 20 in 2009, and four in 2010 .
Haryana also is known for incidents of honour killing. Bhagalpur in the northern Indian state of Bihar has also been notorious for honour killings. Recent cases include a 16-year-old girl, Imrana, from Bhojpur who was set on fire inside her house in a case of what the police called ‘moral vigilantism’. The victim had screamed for help for about 20 minutes before neighbours arrived, only to find her still smoldering. She was admitted to a local hospital, where she later succumbed to her injuries. In another case in May 2008, Jayvirsingh Bhadodiya shot his daughter Vandana Bhadodiya and struck her in the head with an axe. In June 2010 some incidents were reported even from Delhi.
In a landmark judgment, in March 2010, Karnal district court ordered the execution of the five perpetrators in an honour killing case, while giving a life sentence to the khap (local caste-based council) head who ordered the killings of Manoj Banwala (23) and Babli (19), two members of the same clan who eloped and married in June 2007. Despite being given police protection on court orders, they were kidnapped; their mutilated bodies were found a week later from an irrigation canal.
In contrast, honour killings are rare to non-existent in South India and the western Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. There have been no honor killings in West Bengal in over 100 years, largely due to the activism and influence of reformists such as Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Vidyasagar and Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
In 1990, the National Commission for Women set up a statutory body in order to address the issues of honor killings among some ethnic groups in North India. This body reviewed constitutional, legal and other provisions as well as challenges women face. The NCW's activism has contributed significantly towards the reduction of honor killings in rural areas of North India. According to Pakistani activists Hina Jilani and Eman M. Ahmed, Indian women are considerably better protected against honor killings by Indian law and government than Pakistani women, and they have suggested that governments of countries affected by honor killings use Indian law as a model in order to prevent honor killings in their respective societies.
Alarmed by the rise of honour killings, the Government is planning to bring a bill in the Monsoon Session of Parliament next month (July 2010) to provide for deterrent punishment for 'honour' killings .
An Amnesty International statement adds: }}
The lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says, "The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions.
Nighat Taufeeq of the women's resource center Shirkatgah (Lahore, Pakistan) says: "It is an unholy alliance that works against women: the killers take pride in what they have done, the tribal leaders condone the act and protect the killers and the police connive the cover-up."
A July 2008 Turkish study by a team from Dicle University on honor killings in the Southeastern Anatolia Region (the predominantly Kurdish area of Turkey) has so far shown that little if any social stigma is attached to the act. It also comments that the practise is not related to a feudal societal structure, "there are also perpetrators who are well-educated university graduates. Of all those surveyed, 60 percent are either high school or university graduates or at the very least, literate."
:The Special Rapporteur indicated that there had been contradictory decisions with regard to the honour defense in Brazil, and that legislative provisions allowing for partial or complete defense in that context could be found in the penal codes of Argentina, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Peru, Syria, Venezuela and the Palestinian National Authority. This has twice been put forward for cancellation by the government, but was retained by the Lower House of the Parliament, in 2003: a year in which at least seven honor killings took place. Article 98 of the Penal Code is often cited alongside Article 340 in cases of honor killings. “Article 98 stipulates that a reduced sentence is applied to a person who kills another person in a ‘fit of fury’”.
Countries where honor killing is not legal but is known to occur include:
*Turkey: In Turkey, persons found guilty of this crime are sentenced to life in prison. There are well documented cases, where Turkish courts have sentenced whole families to life imprisonment for an honor killing. The most recent was on January 13, 2009, where a Turkish Court sentenced five members of the same Kurdish family to life imprisonment for the "honour killing" of Naile Erdas, 16, who got pregnant as a result of rape.
*Pakistan: Honor killings are known as karo kari () (). The practice is supposed to be prosecuted under ordinary murder, but in practice police and prosecutors often ignore it. Often a man must simply claim the killing was for his honor and he will go free. Nilofar Bakhtiar, advisor to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, stated that in 2003, as many as 1,261 women were murdered in honor killings. On December 8, 2004, under international and domestic pressure, Pakistan enacted a law that made honor killings punishable by a prison term of seven years, or by the death penalty in the most extreme cases. Women's rights organizations were, however, wary of this law as it stops short of outlawing the practice of allowing killers to buy their freedom by paying compensation to the victim's relatives. Women's rights groups claimed that in most cases it is the victim's immediate relatives who are the killers, so inherently the new law is just eyewash. It did not alter the provisions whereby the accused could negotiate pardon with the victim's family under the Islamic provisions. In March 2005 the Pakistani parliament rejected a bill which sought to strengthen the law against the practice of honor killing. However, the bill was brought up again, and in November 2006, it passed. It is doubtful whether or not the law would actually help women.
*Egypt: A number of studies on honor crimes by The Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, includes one which reports on Egypt's legal system, noting a gender bias in favor of men in general, and notably article 17 of the Penal Code : judicial discretion to allow reduced punishment in certain circumstance, often used in honor killings case.
Category:Domestic violence Category:Homicide Category:Violence against women
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