Mick Hartley

On the women in Kurdistan who pour cooking oil over themselves:

“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 blame 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 “honor” 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. Honor 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…

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…

“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…”

Update: here’s a related article in the Guardian on “honour suicides” in Kurdish Turkey.

Update 2: the Guardian article centres on the city of Batman, in Eastern Turkey.

Absent from the campaign in Batman has been the mayor, Huseyin Kalkan, who was awarded damages by DC Comics after a lawsuit over the use of his town’s name for the superhero Batman.

How odd. Does anyone think that the superhero was named after the town? – that Batman’s originator was browsing through an atlas one day, came across Batman in Turkey, and had a sudden flash of inspiration? And if not, why should the mayor be awarded any damges?

Mind you, if there was a nearby town called Robin they might have a case.