Murder in the Name of Honor (21 page)

Fifteen-year-old Samera's last mistake was to chat to a young man without a male chaperone. She lived in Salfeet, a small Palestinian town on the West Bank, where this sort of behaviour was deemed to be unacceptable and she was forced to marry the young man. Less than a year later, she gave birth. Five years later, unable to bear her husband's domineering and abusive ways, she left and went into hiding. According to the neighbourhood gossips, she stayed with several different men. Samera's family accepted the word of the gossips without question.

In July 1999 Samera was found at the bottom of a narrow well, her neck broken. Her father, his honour restored, told the court that his daughter had committed suicide. They accepted his explanation without question.

On 16 October 1995, Ibtihaj Hasson got out of a car with her
younger brother on a main street in Daliat al Carmel, a small Israeli Druze village. A decade earlier, Ibtihaj had committed the unpardonable sin of marrying a non-Druze man. Now, after luring her back to her home village with promises that all was forgiven and her safety assured, her brother pulled out a knife and began to stab her. A crowd of more than a hundred people quickly gathered, some of whom urged him on. Within minutes, Ibtihaj lay dead on the ground while the crowd cheered her killer: ‘Hero, hero! You are a real man!'
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Ibrahim had agonized over his decision: ‘She is my sister,' he told the journalist Suzanne Zima, ‘my flesh and blood – I am a human being. I didn't want to kill her. I didn't want to be in this situation. They [community members] push[ed] me to make this decision. I know what they expect from me. If I do this, they look at me like a hero, a clean guy, a real man. If I don't kill my sister, the people would look at me like I am a small person.'

Researchers who have tried to collect data on honour crimes in Palestine have had to contend with poor record-keeping by the authorities. However, they estimate that up to a hundred women were killed in crimes of honour in 1998, although the Palestinian police contend that there were only eight proven cases.

Official numbers released by the Palestinian Women's Affairs Ministry state that about twenty Palestinian women and girls were killed in 2004, with approximately fifty additional cases of ‘forced suicide'. The Palestinian Ministry also confirmed that dozens of other killings are covered up each year, according to a report by the
Guardian Weekly
, published in July 2005.

Palestinian activist Aida Touma-Sliman said in a 2006 essay that the first demonstration against so-called honour crimes within the Palestinian community in Israel was held in 1990 after a young woman was murdered by her father when he discovered she was pregnant out of wedlock.
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He did this even though he knew his daughter had been raped by another relative.

During the trial, a local mayor, justified her father's action, saying, ‘the father had no choice because it was the only way he could continue to live in an honourable manner … these are our traditions, and that is how we act.'

His statements outraged many Palestinian activists and groups. As a result, a petition was started and adverts were placed in local newspapers calling for the resignation of the officials who provided the testimony. The resignation never came, but the protests did raise public awareness.
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In 1993, an organization named Al Badeel was set up by ten women and human rights activists to end so-called honour killings in Palestinian society.
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Al Badeel was inspired by a horrific murder that had shaken Palestinian society in 1991, when a father, together with his son, murdered his daughter who was pregnant out of wedlock. It was later revealed that the father had been raping his daughter; when she became pregnant, he feared that he might be exposed, and conspired with his son to burn her to death.

Al Badeel played a crucial role in raising public awareness about this and other cases. According to Touma-Sliman, since this case was made public, protestors have taken to the streets whenever a so-called honour killing is reported. She said that Al Badeel, along with politicians, police officials and finally the public, ‘forced the press to take note of the issue, and criticism developed of how the media dealt with the issue – generally the press buried the stories deep in the newspapers, did not go into detail, did not investigate and did not question trial outcomes.'

A further turning point was the 1995 murder of Ibtihaj Hasson. Touma-Sliman wrote: ‘This tragic and ugly scene was the impetus behind a wave of articles by intellectuals and human rights activists condemning both this murder and honour crimes in general.'
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In March of that year, Maha Abdo, a social worker in the West Bank, told Mary Curtius from the
Sydney Morning Herald
, ‘For years we did not want our dirty laundry hung in public. These
issues were not discussed. But it is out now because of the growing awareness amongst Palestinian women.'

The Hebrew press used to shy away from covering these crimes because it regarded such incidents as an internal Palestinian issue. Their attitudes changed thanks to the extensive work by women's groups such as Al Badeel.
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As was the case in Jordan, Palestinian women's groups attempted to change the laws that provided leniency to murderers who claimed their crime was a so-called honour killing, but their calls were quashed by MPs who argued that reform would lead to a ‘collapse in the moral fabric of society'. Religious leaders condemned the crime but blamed immoral behaviour and women's lack of adherence to dress codes, arguing that if religious codes were followed then honour killings would stop.

Judges, meanwhile, continue to practise discrimination. Courts tend to believe that the victim is not free of guilt. For example, when a brother stabbed his sister to death, because she had been the subject of rumour about her chastity, the court ruled that he deserved leniency because she had ‘stabbed him in his manhood'.

The struggle to change the law has subsided somewhat since 2000, partly because of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, the re-invasion of Israeli armed forces and the growing humanitarian crisis in these territories, which have caused the national political agenda to take precedence over the women's rights agenda.

So the killings continue in Palestine with no real change in numbers. Recent cases include that of a twenty-two-year-old Christian Palestinian woman, Faten Habash. In July 2005, her father bludgeoned her to death with an iron bar because she wanted to marry a Muslim man. Faten had sought refuge with a tribal leader but was persuaded to return home after her father, with tears in his eyes, promised her that there would be no more
beatings and no more threats to her life, and that she was free to marry the man she wanted. After her murder, hundreds of Palestinian women held a vigil in Ramallah, making it abundantly clear that they will never cease their struggle to try and save women like Faten.

In Brazil, it is widely believed that a man can legitimately kill his
allegedly
adulterous wife on the grounds of honour and such cases are regularly treated with leniency in the courtroom. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented cases of women killed by their husbands from the 1970s to the late 1990s for leaving or divorcing their husbands, returning home late from work, refusing to sleep with their husband, suspicion of adultery or because they had been caught in an adulterous situation.

Article 25 of the Brazilian Penal Code states: ‘It is understood that it is a legitimate defence for anyone to use moderate necessary means to repel unjust aggression, present or imminent, to himself or somebody else.' Such a defence may be used only if the response is proportional and immediate in respect of the ‘unjust aggression'. According to legal doctrine, any and every legal right can be defended legally, including one's ‘honour'.

HRW's report indicated that while the ‘legitimate defence' argument was used widely and successfully by men, ‘[it] is rarely used in cases in which wives kill their husbands'. HRW quoted a Brazilian state prosecutor who said, ‘In general, women who kill their husbands are always sentenced to a higher sentence than men who kill their wives … Most men who are accused of killing their wives get simple homicide … Many of the women accused of killing their husbands get qualified homicide.'

A Brazilian judge said, ‘The difference in sentencing between men and women is related to the fact that men kill their wives in the
heat of the moment while women in the great majority plan [the crime]. Men normally act in an impetuous moment, although it is important to stress that they also plan.'

This Penal Code has been in place for more than sixty years and was created by a patriarchal society with outdated male-centred morals. The failure of legislators to repeal or modify these laws has allowed judges to defend this outdated patriarchal state in ways that are incompatible with basic human rights.

Brazilian scholars and activists Dr Sylvia Pimentel, Valéria Pandjiarjian and Juliana Belloque have stated that Brazil's judicial system, more than that of any other South American country, accepts the defence of ‘legitimate defence of honour' in murders and assaults committed against women by their male spouses and former spouses.

The women's movement in Brazil organized a huge campaign in the 1980s to eliminate this defence under the slogan ‘Who loves does not kill'. This came in the wake of an infamous murder case where a rich businessman shot his wife dead but was acquitted by the judicial court because the murder was considered to be a ‘legitimate defence of his honour'. The ensuing outrage meant the man was retried and this time sentenced to fifteen years.
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Despite the best efforts of many committed activists, the Brazilian courts still issue judgments today that accept the ‘legitimate defence of honour'.
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While Bolivia, Peru and Argentina have changed their classification of sexual offences from ‘offences to customs' to ‘offences to sexual liberty', Brazil continues to classify sexual offences as ‘offences against custom', while Uruguay maintains its classification of ‘offences to customs and family order'. For example, in one verdict given in Brazil in March 2002, the Court of Appeal acquitted a man of attempting to murder the lover of his partner with a knife after finding him in his bed with his wife.

The judges said:

Antonio, who had already been offended in his honour, being the laughing stock of his neighbourhood, and labelled a cuckold ... entered the house and saw his wife with J.J. in deep sleep, half naked, in his own bed and in the presence of his son, whose cradle was in the same bedroom … If he had left that house without doing what he did, his honour would be ineffaceably offended. It cannot be forgotten that the defendant was raised in a different time, during the twenties and thirties when morals and customs were different and probably more rigid than nowadays, which undoubtedly influenced his character, shaping his personality and actions.
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Sadly, so-called crimes of honour really do occur all round the world, in so many countries that there is not sufficient space available to deal with them all in detail here. In India, for example, more than a thousand women are murdered in honour killings each year. Most murders happen after a woman marries a man from a lower caste, which is seen as damaging to the family's standing in society. Oxfam has said that ‘every six hours, somewhere in India a young married woman is burned alive, beaten to death or driven to commit suicide.'

Many hundreds of women are thought to have been murdered in Bangladesh. Odhikar, a local human rights organization, reported that out of 639 rapes committed in 2006, 126 of these victims were killed and thirteen committed suicide. In the same year, 243 dowry-related killings were reported to the police.

So-called honour killings also persist in many smaller countries, including Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Fiji, the Dominican Republic, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Senegal. While many may not find this surprising, I think most people will be truly shocked to learn the frequency with which they are now occurring in western countries, including the UK and the USA.

The streets of Derby in the UK may be thousands of miles from Pakistan, but walking down some of them, one feels a lot closer to Lahore than London. These form some of the most tightly-knit immigrant communities in Europe, where tradition and honour play a crucial role in everyday life.

In 1995, fifteen-year-old Rukhsana Naz was plucked from these streets and married off to an older man in Pakistan. Together they had two children and planned to set up home in the UK. Rukhsana returned first and, as her husband waited for permission to travel, she became pregnant by her childhood sweetheart. She was by then nineteen.

As the pregnancy became obvious, Rukhsana told her mother, Shakeela, that she wanted to divorce her husband. Her mother beat her, kicking her in the stomach and demanding she have an abortion. A few days later, her twenty-two-year-old brother, Shazad, along with her mother, forced Rukhsana to sign a legal document, naming them as the guardians of her two children.

A few days after that, Rukhsana's other brother, eighteen-year-old Iftikhar, returned home from college and heard a commotion coming from the basement. He ran downstairs and found his mother holding down Rukhsana while Shazad strangled her with plastic flex. ‘Be strong, my son,' his mother told him. The family put Rukhsana's body in the car and drove a hundred miles to dump it.

Shazad and Shakeela were jailed for life in 1999.
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This was one of the first cases of an honour killing to receive serious attention from the British press. But it is now known that such murders have been committed in the UK at least as far back as the 1970s.