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As more than 100 victims
of possible honour killings are being
re-investigated by the police, Chris Bond looks
beneath the surface at a disturbing issue that won't
go away.
IN IRAN earlier this year Zhila, a
13-year-old schoolgirl, was sentenced to death by
stoning after she had an incestuous affair with her
15-year-old brother which led to the birth of an
illegitimate child.
Following pressure from human rights organisations
and the international community, the Iranian
judiciary changed the sentence, but both sister and
brother were whipped 55 times for the shame they had
brought to their families.
While such behaviour between two youngsters
undoubtedly shocks our sensibilities, the subsequent
sentencing is even more shocking.
Zhila survived but it's estimated that about 5,000
women a year – that's more than 13 a day – are
victims of so-called honour killings.
These brutal crimes involve the victims, usually
women, being killed by another family member as a
result of the shame perceived to have been caused by
their behaviour.
This can be anything from having an adulterous
affair, to asking for a divorce or "allowing"
themselves to be raped.
Metropolitan Police figures show 12 cases of honour
killings were prosecuted in the UK last year,
although the actual number of murders is believed to
be much higher.
In response to these concerns the Crown Prosecution
Service (CPS) has announced that 117 deaths and
disappearances of Asian women, over a 10 year
period, are being re-investigated to ascertain
whether or not they were victims of honour killings.
At Bradford Crown Court last month, two men were
jailed for 34 years between them after pleading
guilty to murdering 22-year-old Zafar Iqbal who had
refused to end a relationship with their cousin, for
whom an arranged marriage was planned.
The issue hit the headlines during the 1990s when
Jack and Zena Briggs, from Bradford, came out and
spoke about their traumatic ordeal – both were
condemned to death by her family after they eloped.
Zena had been promised to a first cousin in Pakistan
but fell in love with Jack and they were forced to
flee for their lives after her family used private
detectives, hitmen and bounty hunters to track them
down.
The victims of honour crimes are often from Muslim
communities and Keighley Labour MP Ann Cryer, who
has campaigned tirelessly on the issue, believes the
problem is more prevalent than people are willing to
admit.
"It is fundamentally criminal and a total abuse of
the human rights of Asian women. It's a subject
that's been kept under wraps for too long," she
says.
"The very people who would normally stand up and
shout about abuse of human rights are the same
people who are trying to be politically correct and
won't campaign on it."
Ms Cryer claims the victims are usually young Asian
women.
"There has got to be an explanation why intelligent
young women, who are born in Keighley, allow
themselves to be bullied into marrying someone they
don't want to," she says.
"It's a mixture of pressures that are brought to
bear. Severe beatings by a girl's brother or father
do happen if they don't go along with it.
"They might be beaten or completely ostracized by
the family which might not seem too bad to us, but
for an Asian girl it is a very severe punishment."
She believes we're only seeing the tip of the
iceberg.
"It's much, much, bigger in the Asian and Muslim
community throughout the country."
Ms Cryer says at least one woman visits her surgery
each week asking for help to get out of an unwanted
marriage.
"There's big numbers involved and if you talk to
leaders of the community they all say it's dreadful
publically and it should be stopped but what is said
privately we don't know.
"We are only going to stop these things when the
community decides it has to stop, until they decide
to do something we can only fiddle around the
edges."
Sawsan Salim, co-ordinator of the Kurdistan Refugees
Women's Organisation, admits the problem goes much
deeper than most people realise.
"Women don't want to talk about it because they
think there is no solution."
She believes the problem is both religious and
cultural.
"The problem is in countries like Iran and Iraq and
other Asian countries women represent the nation and
they have to be pure and clean," she says.
"If a women asks for a divorce it brings shame and
it means she is doing something wrong and they will
kill her, they will punish her."
Ms Salim, who also co-ordinates the International
Campaign Against Honour Killings, says the situation
is not improving in this country.
"We can't see much change and still we feel it's not
being stopped. It is going on today and there are
still many cases."
More than half of the hundreds of cases Salim deals
with each year involve women who have been the
victim of some kind of honour-related crime.
"They come to us, they tell us their story and we
give them options, but at the end of the day they
say there's no solution and they go back to their
violent environment."
She believes multiculturalism has inadvertently
helped keep the issue of honour crimes hidden in
this country.
"This multicultural process is a big problem,
encouraging different cultures to practice their own
culture without understanding what it is about. Is
it equal, is it practicing human rights or women's
rights?
"It is encouraging people to isolate themselves and
to practice their own culture and not communicate
with modern society, which is bad," she says.
"It is important to raise awareness. The Government,
organisations, local leaders and the police all need
to make people understand," she says.
But Haleh Afshar, Professor of Politics and Women's
Studies at York University, believes honour killings
can't just be blamed on Muslim and Asian countries.
"We've had British cases where husbands have felt
the right to murder their wives because they have
been unfaithful. Although we are seeing it very
clearly in a particular set of categories, I can't
think of a culture that is free of it."
She says the success of feminism during the last
century helped empower women in the western world,
whereas in some other countries they have remained
second-class citizens.
"I think it has a great deal to do with the idea of
men seeing women as the emblem of the household.
"It is not only in Islamic societies, it occurs in
countries all over the world where families bond
together. In some families daughters are still seen
to be the property of the fathers.
"It's a long, hard, battle but I don't think it's
one specific culture that is involved in honour
killings, it's this whole idea of fathers owning
their children."
Perhaps only when this mentality is changed will
such barbaric behaviour be stamped out.
chris.bond@ypn.co.uk
http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk
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