Friday, Jan 03, 2003
Whose honour is it anyway?
Rasheeda Bhagat
IN A recent report, the Istanbul-based Women for Women's Human Rights (WWHR) said that every year at least 100 women are murdered in Turkey under the pretext of the notorious "honour killings". Its co-founder, Ms Pinar Ilkkaracan, said the number could be higher as honour killings are often written off as suicides or reported as deaths from natural causes.
This is a barbaric practice that is widely prevalent in Pakistan, Turkey and certain West Asian countries. Turkey, otherwise one of the few Islamic countries known for the progress its women have made, has had the ignominy of one such case being widely reported by the international media some time back. In this case, a young woman's throat was slit right in the town square, because one of her admirers had dedicated a love ballad to her on the local radio!
Women are killed in the name of "honour" in such countries when they are accused, by the men of the family — including husbands, father, brothers or uncles — of having indulged in "immoral behaviour".
In Pakistan, honour killing is known as karo-kari and is most pervasive in the tribal, rural areas of the North West Frontier Province. The most shameful aspect of this heinous practice is that both the community members — in some cases, entire villages — and the authorities collude in the cover-up.
Soon after assuming power in the military coup of 1999, Gen Pervez Musharraf, had said that his regime would crack down on this practice, which is punishable under the laws of the land. But this has remained an empty promise, with the tribal chieftains of the NWFP region being too powerful for any court to take on.
I vividly remember that in the April of 1999, on an aircraft bound for Lahore from Karachi, the morning newspapers had headlines screaming of the murder of Samia Imran, a young married woman, right in the Lahore office of a prominent lawyer and human rights activist. The woman's crime was that she had dared to seek the lawyer's help in getting a divorce from her husband, who was extremely violent and had been beating her for years. But the family thought that Samia's divorce would compromise its "honour". The lawyer was the gutsy Hina Jilani, sister of Asma Jehangir, the well-known human rights activist.
Later in the day, a shaken Ms Jilani, told Business Line that while killing women in the name of honour was common in some regions of Pakistan, this was the first time the killers had committed such a daring murder right inside a law firm. In fact, one of the bullets meant for Samia narrowly missed Ms Jilani, who was seated opposite her in the room.
The most tragic part of the story was that Samia's mother sought a meeting with her daughter, who was afraid to meet her. But the lawyer arranged the meeting, assuring Samia that she would be present and no harm would come to her.
But along with the woman came an `uncle', carrying a pistol hidden under his shawl; soon after entering the room, he pointed the weapon at Samia's head and shot her dead. Before the stunned security guards could grab the killer, he had fled the scene.
A newspaper had quoted Ms Jilani as saying, "There was no scream. There was dead silence. I don't even think she knew what was happening."
Soon after this shocking incident, condemned widely in Pakistan, the Benazir Bhutto-led Pakistan People's Party, which was then in the Opposition, had moved a resolution in the Upper House (Senate) to condemn such killings. But the resolution was rejected, because of the influential members from the tribal-dominated Peshawar belt.
Worse, during the heated debate, some of the members wanted the two lawyers — Ms Jilani and Ms Jehangir — to be punished for trying to help Samia get a divorce!
Pakistani writer Ms Yasmeen Hassan, author of The Haven Becomes Hell: A Study of Domestic Violence in Pakistan, observes: "The concepts of women as property and honour are so deeply entrenched in the social, political and economic fabric of Pakistan that the Government, for the most part, ignores the daily occurrences of women being killed and maimed by their families. Frequently, women murdered in `honour' killings are recorded as having committed suicide or died in accidents."
It is not known how many women are maimed for life because the attempt to murder falls short of that. One of the most gruesome reported cases of a woman devastated, but not killed, in the name of honour was of 32-year-old Zahid Perveen. One can read about it on the Web site www.gendercide.org. The Web site quotes from a report in the Montreal Gazette: "Zahid Perveen's eyes are empty sockets of unseeing flesh, her earlobes have been sliced off, and her nose is a gaping, reddened stump of bone. Sixteen months ago, her husband, in a fit of rage over her alleged affair with a brother-in-law, bound her hands and feet and slashed her with a razor and knife. She was three months pregnant at the time. `He came home from the mosque and accused me of having a bad character,' the tiny, 32-year-old woman murmured as she awaited a court hearing. `I told him it was not true, but he didn't believe me. He caught me and tied me up, and then he started cutting my face. He never said a word except, `This is your last night.'"
As it turned out, it was not her last night. The most atrocious part of such attacks on women is that a miniscule percentage of the men who are hauled up in courts, stand proudly before the judge, but refuse to repent. Perveen's husband stated in court, "What I did was wrong, but I am satisfied. I did it for my honour and prestige."
Coming to the definition of "immoral behaviour", it is mostly the men who decide what constitutes immorality, though in Samia's case the mother was hand in glove with the uncle who killed her. A wide range of `misbehaviour' — from marital infidelity, refusing to agree to an arranged marriage, seeking a divorce, flirting with or receiving phone calls from men, or even failing to serve food to the husband on time — can be "immoral behaviour". Worst of all, a woman who has been raped is also considered "immoral" and often killed in these regions — a case where the victim pays for her victimisation and the assault on her body, with her own life! Who is to question the family or the husband, and ask why, since they proclaim themselves the guardians of their women's honour, they should not be punished for allowing the woman to be raped, or for failing to protect her honour?
Forget the family, what about the state's responsibility in protecting the right to life of every citizen? Such ludicrous killings in the name of honour constitute a gross abuse of human rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires state parties to `ensure' the rights of the Covenant, an obligation that the Human Rights Committee of the UN has stated to extend to protecting against acts inflicted by people acting in their private capacity.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which monitors the implementation of the UN Women's Convention, notes that "under general international law and specific human rights covenants, states may be responsible for private acts if they fail to act with due diligence to prevent the violation of rights, or to investigate and punish acts of violence, and for providing compensation".
Amnesty International, in one of its reports on "honour killings", has quoted Ms Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, as saying, "In the context of norms recently established by the international community, a state that does not act against crimes of violence against women is as guilty as the perpetrators. States have a positive duty to prevent, investigate and punish crimes associated with violence against women."
All this is fine. But, then, what do you do about such states as Jordan, where "honour killings" are sanctioned by the law? According to Article 340
of Jordan's criminal code, "A husband or a close blood relative who kills a woman caught in a situation highly suspicious of adultery will be totally exempt from (any) sentence." Article 98 guarantees a lighter sentence for the male killers of female relatives who have committed an "act which is illicit in the eyes of the perpetrator."
And what about our very own custom of sati, where women, often doped, are pushed on to the funeral pyres of their husbands, because not committing sati will compromise the honour of the family and, sometimes, that of the entire village?
(Response may be sent to rasheeda at thehindu.co.in)
Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line