Honor Killing

[Christina]

BAGHDAD, IRAQ (CNN) -- Authorities in northern Iraq arrested four people in connection with the so-called "honor killing" last month of a Kurdish teen -- a startling, morbid pummeling caught on a mobile phone video camera and broadcast around the world.Two of the four arrested are members of the victim's family, police in Nineveh province said Thursday. Four others, including a cousin thought to have instigated the killing, are being sought.The case portrays the tragedy and brutality of "honor killings" in the Muslim world. Honor killings take place when family members kill relatives, almost always female, because their alleged actions shame a family.Dozens of honor killings are reported in Iraq every year. The practice has been condemned around the world by governments and human rights groups. A yearly vigil protesting honor killings is held in London, England.In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month. (Watch the attack, and what authorities are doing about it )link belowAuthorities believe she was killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. The Yazidis, who observe an ancient Middle Eastern religion, look down on mixing with people of another faith.The killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later.The violence ratcheted up tensions between Yazids and Muslims in Bashiqa, the victim's hometown, a largely Yazidi city in Nineveh province.Provincial officials don't think much could have been done to stop the killing, but at least three officers are being investigated and could be fired. Also, the top police official in Bashiqa is being replaced. ......video linkhttp://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05...q.honorkilling/

 

[Christina]

Thousands of Women Killed for Family "Honor"Hillary Mayellfor National Geographic NewsHundreds, if not thousands, of women are murdered by their families each year in the name of family "honor." It's difficult to get precise numbers on the phenomenon of honor killing; the murders frequently go unreported, the perpetrators unpunished, and the concept of family honor justifies the act in the eyes of some societies. Most honor killings occur in countries where the concept of women as a vessel of the family reputation predominates, said Marsha Freemen, director of International Women's Rights Action Watch at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran. But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women. In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say. "In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions." Complicity by other women in the family and the community strengthens the concept of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family and not a judicial issue. "Females in the family—mothers, mothers-in-law, sisters, and cousins—frequently support the attacks. It's a community mentality," said Zaynab Nawaz, a program assistant for women's human rights at Amnesty International.