Showing posts with label honour killings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label honour killings. Show all posts
Monday, November 02, 2015
Germany: Father Accused of Strangling Daughter to Death over Forbidden Affair
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The BBC has been accused of 'extraordinary' censorship by a leading playwright after she had dialogue cut from her hard-hitting drama because it could have offended Muslims.
Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose 2004 production Behzti was pulled from a Birmingham theatre after it sparked Sikh protests, has accused the Corporation of tampering with her work because it involved an honour killing.
Ms Bhatti's drama The Heart of Darkness will be played on Radio 4 this Friday as part of its popular DCI Stone series, but she says the BBC has caused an 'awful situation' which has led to a 'betrayal' of her work.
At the centre of her story is the honour killing of a 16-year-old Asian girl, and DCI Stone is told by his bosses to treat the case 'sensitively' because she is Muslim.
Although they have admitted removing dialogue from its afternoon drama, the BBC claims they did it to avoid 'potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing'.
Describing the play's final line, Ms Bhatti told The Independent: 'At the end, a character says: "There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right." The compliance department came back and said, "we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings". Read on and comment » | Martin Robinson | Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Friday, November 02, 2012
Pakistani officials have arrested the parents of a 15-year-old girl who died after being doused with acid at her home.
The couple, from Kashmir, reportedly confessed to the killing earlier this week because they believed she had sullied the family's honour.
Such so-called honour killings are common in much of Pakistan, with thousands of women burned, disfigured or maimed in similar attacks every year, according to human rights groups. Such attacks are relatively rare in Kashmir, however.
Zohra Yusuf, chair of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), said the case was a "classic" example of a family dispute turned horribly violent. "What is really striking is that there really is no regret among members of the family. Justice for the women is very, very rare," she told the Guardian. » | Jason Burke, south Asia correspondent | Friday, November 02, 2012
Friday, August 03, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The parents of Shafilea Ahmed, who believed their 17-year-old daughter had brought shame on the family for wanting to live a western lifestyle, have been been jailed for 25-years each after being found guilty of her murder.
Iftikhar Ahmed and his wife Farzana were convicted of the honour killing today following a three month trial at Chester Crown Court.
Shafilea's father showed no emotion as he was sentenced but his wife sobbed loudly. Trial judge Mr Justice Roderick Evans told them: "Your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than the love of your child."
The court had been told how the couple from the same village in rural Pakistan had jointly killed their 17-year-old daughter after claiming her behaviour had brought the family into disrepute.
They had clashed with their eldest daughter over her westernised lifestyle and objected to her wearing the same clothes as her white friends, rather than traditional Pakistani dress.
In 2003, months before she disappeared she was forced to travel to Pakistan, where she was expected to marry a man more than ten years her senior.
In desperation Shafilea swallowed bleach, badly burning her throat and causing the man to call off the marriage. He declared she was “damaged goods”.
She returned to Britain but went missing from the family home in Warrington in September 2003. » | Friday, August 03, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Alesha Ahmed was continuing her evidence at Chester Crown Court where parents, Iftikhar, 52, and Farzana, 49, deny murdering 17-year-old Shafilea.
The teenager vanished in September 2003 and her decomposed remains were discovered in Cumbria in February 2004.
It was not until last year that Ms Ahmed provided the ''final piece of the puzzle'' about Shafilea's death, the prosecution say, when she disclosed that she witnessed her parents killing Shafilea at the family home in Liverpool Road, Warrington.
Today, the jury were read passages of Ms Ahmed's first police interview following Shafilea's disappearance. » | Thursday, May 31, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
DETROIT FREE PRESS: Anti-Islam advocates from across the U.S. gathered Sunday in Dearborn for a conference to bring attention to what they say is a problem of Muslim honor killings.
About 150 gathered at the Hyatt in Dearborn for the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference, named after a 20-year-old Arab-American Muslim woman who was killed by her stepfather last year in Warren.
But at another conference in Detroit, about 100 people gathered earlier in the day to oppose the anti-Islam conference, saying it was the latest attack on metro Detroit's Arab-American and Muslim communities. Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the U.S., many of them Muslim.
"We stand for America," said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab-American News, at a panel at the DoubleTree hotel in Detroit. "And they (anti-Muslim activists) stand against America and against the American way of life." » | Niraj Warikoo | Detroit Free Press Staff Writer | Monday, April 30, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Hundreds of young female immigrants are hiding from their families in Germany after fleeing oppression, physical violence and even death threats. Charities and social workers help the women get new identities and build independent lives for themselves, but the risk of revenge from honor-obsessed relatives remains.
Bahar ran away early on a winter morning, one-and-a-half years after her mother was murdered. She helped her younger siblings get ready for school, and then she gave them a goodbye kiss on the forehead. Her uncle and her brothers were still sleeping. Bahar tiptoed out of the apartment in her socks, walked down the stairs and out the door. And then she ran for her life.
Today Bahar is 26 and likes to wear high-heeled shoes. She has chosen a popular café in a small city as a meeting point. She is wearing a modest amount of makeup, and her black hair is pulled back into a bun. She smiles tentatively and introduces herself, using the name in her new passport, which, for her protection, cannot be used in this article.
Bahar's family came to Germany from Iraq in 1996. They lived in the eastern city of Halle an der Saale for the first two years, in an apartment in a high-rise building with a dingy kitchen. Her father felt that most jobs were beneath him, beat his wife and "put out cigarettes on her skin," says Bahar. The father would sometimes disappear for months at a time. Bahar suspects that he was involved in criminal activities. "Everything was always peaceful without him. We even had a picnic in the park once," says Bahar. She took along some of the photos from that day when she ran away, but she can't bear to look at them, she says.
During those happy times, when she was alone with her six children, Bahar's mother came to the conclusion that she wanted to separate from her despotic husband. She went to the local town hall with Bahar to get information about German divorce law. When the father found out about it, he took a knife and locked himself in the bedroom with his wife on a summer night in 2003. Bahar holds up her hands to show us two scars: the evidence of her attempt to save her mother.
With the mother dead and the father sentenced to life in prison, an uncle took control of Bahar and her five siblings. He managed to make a caring and thoughtful impression on the youth welfare office, but it was deceptive. He used to turn up the music before he began beating the children. Bahar used makeup to hide the bruises. "I wasn't allowed to read books, and I couldn't even go out on the balcony anymore," she says. "Just cook, do the laundry and clean."
Bahar endured her life as a virtual slave for a year and a half. "Then I knew that I would either kill myself or leave." » | Antje Windmann | Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Mr. Harper visited a Montreal centre for victims of family violence Friday to denounce crimes against women and girls committed in the name of “honour.”
He called honour crimes “barbaric” and “heinous” before promising nearly $350,000 to help fund a program led by The Shield of Athena Family Services to prevent these practices in the city.
“Recently, the tragedy of the Shafia girls touched Canadians profoundly,” Mr. Harper said in a speech at a community centre.
“All Canadians, regardless of the colour of their skin or which god is in their prayers, have the inalienable right to security and life.
“It's our homework to ensure that the victims of these incomprehensible murders did not suffer for nothing.” » | Andy Blatchford | Montreal | The Canadian Press | Friday, March 16, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
‘She was feisty — if she had anything to say she would speak out,’ her mother Margaret says, as she showed me a picture of a smiling, mischievous teenager.
Laura’s Asian boyfriend, Ashtiaq Ashgar, also 17, was born in Britain but when Laura challenged his family’s traditional cultural values by confronting them with details of their relationship, she had to be silenced.
One night in October 2010, Laura was lured to the banks of a canal in Rotherham in South Yorkshire, where Ashtiaq attacked her before throwing her into the water.
So does this mean that Laura was the first white victim of an honour killing in Britain?
Margaret Wilson has never spoken publicly before, but she told me she is convinced her daughter was murdered because she challenged the code of honour which some ethnic communities still follow in the UK.
‘I honestly think it was an honour killing for putting shame on the family. They needed to shut Laura up and they did,’ she says. Read on and comment » | Jane Corbin | Friday, March 16, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: British Crown lawyers are trained in bringing perpetrators of “honour crimes” to justice. Immigrant boys in Sweden perform in plays against domestic violence. Muslim interest groups who challenge such violence have formed in the United States.
This is all taking place because young, immigrant women were so gruesomely sent to their graves by male relatives that people in these countries banded together to say “never again.”
And now, observers are asking which long-term lessons Canada will learn from the Shafia trial. How will police, teachers, social workers, and immigrants join forces to prevent any more women from meeting horrific fates?
“The lesson for me in this very sad story is, if we want to keep the legacy of Sahar, Zainab, Rona, and Geeti alive, we have to look at the issue as a national issue – a national project,” said Shahrzad Mojab, a University of Toronto expert who served as a prosecution witness.
Sunday’s first-degree murder convictions in the quadruple-homicide case have been eye-opening for Canadians – not least because the three perpetrators and four victims all came from the same nuclear family. The trial not only aired the facts of the crime, but also glaring deficits in Canada’s ability to safeguard vulnerable women and children.
Missed signals and squandered opportunities are, tragically, recurring themes in “honour” killings. When family patriarch Mohammad Shafia began threatening the lives of his daughters and first wife, the victims did not know where to turn. Some eventually sought help, only to encounter skeptical officials who failed to grasp the gravity of their peril. » | Colin Freeze | Published: Tuesday, January 31, 2012; updated: Wednesday, February 01, 2012
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: No culture experts required for ‘honour’ crimes: Male authoritarianism and control are deeply embedded in many cultures. A close study of Canada’s South Asian communities will reveal that male authoritarian inclinations are hidden deep beneath the displays of higher education and affluence. The greatest facilitators of this control are women themselves, who are coerced into silent acceptance. The convictions in the Shafia trial present an opportunity to lead the examination to the correct place. ¶ As Sunday’s conviction spread around the country, it released a gamut of emotional responses. Vilification, affirmation of human rights, grief for three beautiful teenagers and a spurned first wife. Justice had to be meted out and so it was. Meanwhile, the ready acceptance that this murder came from the mind of an Afghan patriarch gave air to a fabricated concept that the act was linked to a light-filled term called “honour.” » | Nazneen Sheikh * | Wednesday, February 01, 2012
* Nazneen Sheikh’s latest book is Moon Over Marrakech, a memoir.
Related »
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
An award-winning film partly inspired by Yildiz's story, which opened in dozens of cinemas across Turkey last week, is putting the spotlight on gays in a Muslim country that is seeking European Union membership but remains influenced by conservative and religious values.
The film "Zenne Dancer" — or male belly dancer — is not the nation's first gay-themed movie but is the first to explore the little-known phenomenon of men killed by family members for being gay. So-called honor killings in Turkey usually target women accused of disgracing the family.
"Our main aim was to convey Ahmet's story, but by doing so we also wanted to expose the pressure the (gay and lesbian community) faces from their family, the society and the state," said Mehmet Binay, who co-directed and produced the film with his partner, Caner Alper. » | Suzan Fraser, Associated Press | Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Saturday, December 03, 2011
The number of women and girls in the UK suffering violence and intimidation at the hands of their families or communities is increasing rapidly, according to figures revealing the nationwide scale of "honour" abuse for the first time.
Statistics obtained under the Freedom of Information Act about such violence – which can include threats, abduction, acid attacks, beatings, forced marriage, mutilation and murder – show that in the 12 police force areas for which comparable data was available, reports went up by 47% in just a year.
The figures, shared with the Guardian by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (Ikwro), also reveal that a small number of forces – including four in Scotland – are still not collecting data on how often such violence occurs.
The 39 police forces that gave Ikwro figures recorded 2,823 incidents in 2010. Ikwro estimates that another 500 crimes in which police were involved were committed in the 13 force areas that did not provide data.
But this is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, campaigners say, as so many incidents go unreported because of victims' fears of recriminations. » | Rachel Williams | Saturday, December 03, 2011
MAIL ONLINE: Alarming rise in Muslim honour killings as thousands of cases reported to police last year » | Daily Mail Reporter | Saturday, December 03, 2011
Monday, January 03, 2011
MAIL ONLINE: Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 50, faces life in jail if convicted of so-called 'honour killing' / Prosecutors claim a history of violence and threats against pretty 20-year-old An Iraqi immigrant accused of killing his daughter because he believed she was too Westernised is to go on trial in Arizona this month.
Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 50, faces life in prison if convicted. The case raised awareness about incident of so-called 'honour killings' in the U.S.
In October 2009, he slammed his Jeep into his daughter, Noor Almaleki, 20, prosecutors said.
The woman, who longed to live a normal American life, was in a coma for two weeks before succumbing to her injuries - in a case that caused outrage from people nationwide.
Faleh Almaleki moved his family from Iraq to the Phoenix suburb of Glendale in the mid-1990s.
He and Noor had a tumultuous relationship, according to police and court records and her close friends.
At 17, she refused to enter into an arranged marriage in Iraq, enraging her father, according to a court document filed by prosecutors.
At 19, Noor moved into her own apartment and began working at a fast food restaurant but quit and left her new place after her parents kept showing up at her work, insisting that she return home, the document said.
Later in 2009, she moved into the home of her boyfriend and his parents, Reikan and Amal Khalaf.
They say that she claimed her parents had beaten her.
Almaleki is accused of regularly harassing his daughter and the Khalafs.
Mr Khalaf said Almaleki told him that if Noor didn't move out of the Khalaf home 'something bad was going to happen'. Trial begins for Iraqi immigrant accused of killing his daughter in hit-run attack because she was 'too westernised' >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Monday, January 03, 2011
Monday, May 24, 2010
RUSSIA TODAY: Muslim girls fall victim to honor killings: The United Nations says that over five thousand women and children die every year in so-called "honor killings", often where family members kill women who refuse to enter forced marriages. >>> | Published Monday, June 22, 2010; Edited Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, February 05, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: A 16-year-old girl has been buried alive by her relatives in Turkey as punishment for talking to boys, police have said.
Medine Memi was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
Her father and grandfather have since been arrested and are due to face trial over her death. Her mother was also charged but has since been released.
Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.
Medine had first been reported missing 40 days earlier.
The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.
Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. >>> | Friday, February 05, 2010
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