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Self-immolation: The dark secret of Iraqi
Kurdish women
23.8.2007
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August 23, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq),--
Heshw Mohammed tried to kill herself three times
when her father would not let her marry the man she
loved, swallowing tablets and surviving only because
her stomach was pumped.
Beautiful, timid and abused, she exemplifies what
campaigners and medics warn is a disturbing increase
in women killing themselves -- largely by
self-immolation -- in northern Iraq's relatively
peaceful Kurdistan provinces.
"My father forced me to marry someone else. We were
engaged just 15 days, during which I tried three
times to commit suicide," says Heshw, her eyes cast
down, her fingers clenching and unclenching.
Now aged 20, she has been living in a women's
shelter in the city of Sulaimaniyah for two years,
virtually shut off from the world, with no
psychologist and nothing to fill her time.
"My father would kill me if I went home. He killed
my boyfriend. I don't have any hope for the future.
I'm just sitting here, waiting," she says, refusing
refreshment, her expressionless voice barely more
than a whisper.
Women's campaigners say Heshw's story is all too
common. What is unusual is that she took pills. Most
Iraqi Kurdish women drench their bodies in cooking
fuel from head to toe and set fire to themselves.
Suicide is a stigma in conservative Muslim society,
such as the countryside of Kurdistan where men take
second wives and poor, uneducated women in
particular are second class citizens under their
husband's thumb.
Few admit to self-harm and explain their horrendous
burns, from which most never recover, on a cooking
accident. The secrecy makes it difficult to track
statistics, which range from the dozens to hundreds
dead each year.
"Every year there has been an increase in killing.
Saying it's a cooking accident is just a lie. We
must put pressure on the government to change the
law," says Aso Kamal, a 42-year-old British Kurdish
Iraqi campaigner.
He quotes from newspaper reports that from 1991 to
2007, 12,500 women were murdered for reasons of
"honour" or committed suicide in the three Kurdish
provinces of Iraq; 350 in the first seven months of
this year.
"We want to speak out about this. There is silence
in Kurdistan. People say it's a family matter. We
want to change the patriarchal system in Kurdistan.
Honour killing is against the law but the law is not
being enforced," he says.
Only five people have been arrested in connection
with the deaths -- none of whom have been brought to
the courts, he adds.
His organisation, the Doaa Network Against Violence
-- named after a
17-year-old girl stoned to
death for eloping -- is campaigning
for a government budget to tackle domestic violence
and has launched an awareness campaign.
Kurdo Qaradaghi, a surgeon who performs
reconstructive surgery at the specialist burns
hospital in Sulaimaniyah, says most women with burns
from the countryside had attempted suicide.
"We have a problem. A serious problem. It may be in
self-sacrifice or it may be extreme
attention-seeking... The youngest are aged 12 to
14," he says.
The Women's Union of Kurdistan in Sulaimaniyah said
it recorded 83 women burning themselves in the first
six months of last year; 95 in the first half of
2007.
Touring the burns unit at the hospital, plastic
surgeon Srood Tawfiq believes few of the excuses,
lingering by the beds of two women at death's door
from horrific burns that he says could only have
been self-inflicted.
"On average we admit one such patient a day. We
suspect most of the women of suicide. Only once did
I see a young boy say he attempted suicide. He
wanted to a marry a girl and they refused," he says.
Flaying her heavily bandaged arms around a face
horribly disfigured with raw burns, 39-year-old
Shawnim Mahmud has spent two days screaming in agony
after being brought in following what she said was a
cooking accident.
"She has 79 percent burns. Even if a cooking machine
exploded, it doesn't cause these kind of burns.
There's no chance she'll live," says Tawfiq.
In the next bed lies Sirwa Hassan, a 27-year-old
mother of three from a village near the Iranian
border, tubes running in and out of her nose, barely
whimpering as her 86 percent burns slowly kill her.
"She said it was kerosene but kerosene will not make
this kind of explosion. I don't expect her to live,"
Tawfiq says, gazing down at her bandaged feet, burnt
shoulders and flesh, desperately sad eyes watching
him in silence.
Anna Ahmed Mohammed, a physiotherapist at the burns
unit and one of the few whom patients confide in,
fears suicide is increasing as the economic
situation deteriorates in Iraq and life gets more
difficult.
"There are more economic problems because of the
war, especially in Sulaimaniyah because more people
from the south come to live here. Salaries aren't
enough to buy what you need. Prices have got up,"
she says.
"Here the men always rule their wives. Sometimes
it's unbearable and they can't take it any longer.
Fire is so easy. You can find it at home. Everyone
has kerosene at home and a match," she adds.
Narmen Rostam, 16, has been in hospital for 30 days
with burn injuries. Sitting in her tartan hospital
pyjamas, she sobs on and off, and admits to being
depressed, yet she professes no sympathy for those
attempting suicide.
"They are very foolish. They have no mind in their
brain. We used to tell them you'll be suffering this
pain now and in the other life."
Medics cannot be sure that her own story about a
cooking accident is true.
AFP
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