Mick Hartley

The International Campaign against Honour Killings website keeps an update on the latest horrors, of which there seem to have been quite a few recently.

In Belgium:

Last Monday, Lodelinsart resounded with the sound of gunfire. A young woman of Pakistani origin, 20 years old, was felled by bullets in the street, and died from her wounds in hospital. Far from a random attack this was a family ambush: the presumed perpetrator was none other than Moussadar, the 24 year old brother of the victim…

Sadia was in conflict with her family who wished to force her to take part in an arranged marriage in Pakistan. More generally, they reproached her for having become ‘too Westernised’ but after the breakdown of family relations, the young woman agreed to meet them, on Monday, in Lodelinsart.

She was meant to meet her parents and her brother. Upon their arrival, the sisters found themselves confronted by their brother wielding a firearm.

In Italy:

A Pakistani man in Italy, Mohammed Saleem, and two male relatives, have been sentenced to 30 years in jail in the northern Italian town of Brescia for murdering his daughter, Hina Saleem.

Hina’s maternal uncle was also implicated in the crime and received a sentence of two years and eight months for helping to conceal her body.

In what has been termed an ‘honour killing’ the Pakistani girl was allegedly killed because she had “dishonoured” her family and refused an arranged marriage.

Hina…dressed in western clothes, wore make up, worked in a pizzeria in the northern town of Sarezzo and lived with her Italian boyfriend. She was found with her throat slit buried in the garden of her family home with her head facing Mecca in August 2006.

In Turkey:

Two brothers were sentenced by a court on Tuesday for killing their sister, who has since become an icon in the fight against honor killings.

The older of the two brothers was given a life sentence, the longest sentence given for an honor crime.

This case is likely to set a precedent for future verdicts and hopefully reduce crimes committed based on traditionally held beliefs about women.

İrfan and Ferit Tören killed their sister, Güldünya Tören, to “cleanse their family honor” after a second attempt and received sentences for the crime of attempted murder for their first attempt to kill her and murder for killing her.

Güldünya was “guilty” of being raped by her cousin, and refusing to become his “second wife” after giving birth to a baby. She was 22.

Brother İrfan Tören was sentenced to 16.5 years for the first attempt and to life for the murder.

Ferit Tören, who was a minor at the time of the murder in 2004, received eight years, four months for the initial attempt and 15 years for causing the death of his sister.

Güldünya, who escaped her brothers’ first attempt, was later shot dead by her brothers at a hospital where she was receiving treatment.

Turkey again:

They told me that there is a gun in the house. They said: ‘We are going to kill you tonight. You have seen how we killed your sister in law. You will die the same way.’”

Aisha had every reason to believe her husband’s family when they said that. She had witnessed her sister in law killed a few years back.

Her crime was being the target of harassing phone calls by her husband’s cousin.

He claimed to have fallen in love with her. Although she had not returned his affection and even complained about it to the family, they decided she had to die: what may seem absurd to westerners is, in South-East Turkey, a reality.

Telling her story in a Diyarbakir women’s shelter called ‘Kamer’, Aisha – we are not revealing her real name – now smiles.

It is in the past and she has survived it. She fled that night and eventually found her way to Kamer. The women’s organization began a slow and dangerous process of negotiating between Aisha and her family to ensure her life.

Luckily for Aisha her husband was supportive. Her life was spared, providing both she and her husband left the village.

If they were to return it is doubtful Aisha would last a day.

If they knew she had talked to the press she would also be in danger again.

Few women are as lucky as Aisha in South East Turkey.

Honour crimes have long been a common practice in this part of the world.

Recently they have evolved in a disturbing way. To help its application to join the EU, Turkey tightened laws against honour killings.

But that caused a different problem: a rise in honour suicides. To avoid being punished, families are forcing women to kill themselves.

The problem for Turkish authorities investigating honour suicides is that they are cloaked in a centuries old code of secrecy – as was the case for Halimeh Baytkin, an 18 year old girl who was found dead in a poor neighbourhood of Diyarbakir in 2005.

We tracked down her uncle who gave her family’s version of events: she watched television, got depressed and killed herself he told us.

Authorities believe her family forced her to kill herself because she had dishonoured them simply by having a boyfriend. But noone has been prosecuted for her death.

Many honour crimes are punishment for trivial ‘offences’ such as wearing jeans, talking to a boy or even being looked at by a man in a wrong way.

Women’s groups say three or four women die in suspicious circumstances every month in south east Turkey, and those are only the cases that are reported.

And, in Syria, a dilemma for a judge:

(R. M) Qab, 19, is too close to being killed by her brother, as he has publicly pledged to do in the name of “honor.” (R. M) is one of the two women whose stories Nesasy ran previously.

Since then, we’ve been doing our best to save the lives of these two women, even though the government has ignored their cases to the extent of almost condoning “honor killings” all together.

There’s been some developments in these cases over the past week. One of the young women finally married the man she loved and wanted to be with, and she was released from custody to go with him to an undisclosed location.

But the second woman is still detained, and now that her family has dropped the (fraudulent) theft charges they had brought against her, she is due to be released by law.

The problem is that even though her brother has publicly announced he will kill her to “reclaim the family’s honor,” the court plans to release her directly to her family. In other words, release her directly to the slaughter!

The acting judge, (S.S), is in a difficult dilemma. On the one hand there’s the family with all its laden traditions alongside people in the local community pressuring him to release (R. M) to the family for them to carry out the slaughter that the brother is promising (the father does not condone it.) And on the other hand his own morality and sense of ethics as a judge disallow him to put in danger the life of a citizen. He knows very well that any guarantees her family give for her safety will be nothing beyond ink on paper. He knows well that she will be slaughtered. He has been indecisive on the matter.

And so it goes….