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Honor killing

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Honor killing refers to extra-judicial capital punishment of a female relative for supposed sexual or marital offenses. The justification given is that the "offense" has brought "dishonor" to the family. This is a double standard, because a man will not be killed for such an offense; if he rapes a woman, it is she who "brings dishonor" to her family, not he.

Honor killing is a practice where a family member kills a female relative as punishment for sexual or marital offenses considered to have brought "dishonor" to the family. The prior concept usually relates to unsanctioned sexual activity—often including cases where a woman is raped.

In societies and cultures where it occurs, honor killing is often regarded as a private matter for the affected family alone; rarely do non-family members or the courts become involved or prosecute the perpetrators. The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the annual worldwide total of honor killing victims may be as high as 5, 000 women. Recently, some states such as Turkey have enacted harsher punishments for honor killings.

Contents

Definitions

Human Rights Watch defines "honor killings" as follows:

Honor crimes are acts of violence, usually murder, [mostly] committed by male family members [predominantly] against female [relatives], who are perceived to have brought dishonor upon the family. A woman can be targeted by (individuals within) her family for a variety of reasons, including: refusing to enter into an arranged marriage, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce — even from an abusive husband — or (allegedly) committing adultery. The mere perception that a woman has behaved in a specific way to "dishonor" her family, is sufficient to trigger an attack. [link]
For example, honor killings can sometimes target those who choose boyfriends, lovers or spouses outside of their family's ethnic and/or religious community. Some women who adopt the customs (or religion) of an outside group, may also be more likely to be victims. [link] Furthermore, in certain cultures a raped single woman will garner no bride price if she marries, and thus be considered "worthless" to the family. There is some evidence that homosexuality can also be grounds for honor killing by relatives. Several cases have been suspected but not confirmed. There is also a documented case of a gay Jordanian man who was shot (but not fatally) by his brother. [link]

Many hold the practice to be self-contradictory, since an honor killing is sometimes justified by its participants or supporters, as an attempt to uphold the morals of a religion or a code, which at the same time generally forbids killing as morally wrong.

Honor Suicides

Honor Suicides occur when, in an effort to avoid legal penalties for killing, a woman is ordered or pressured into killing herself. This phenomenon appears to be a relatively recent development. A special envoy for the United Nations named Yakin Erturk, who was sent to Turkey to investigate suspicious suicides, was quoted by the New York Times as saying that some suicides appeared to be "honor killings disguised as a suicide or an accident." [link] [link]

History

Based on suspicion

The killing of people for sexual crimes has been known since the times of Ancient Babylon (1700 BCE). The Codes of Hammurabi and Assura (some of the earliest sets of laws discovered), focus on the perception that a woman’s virginity belongs to her family. In Peru from 1200 BCE - 1532 CE, alleged adulterers were punished by having their hands and feet tied to a wall and being left to starve to death. A man was allowed to kill his wife if he caught or suspected her of having an extra-marital affair, while if a woman caught or suspected her husband of doing the same thing and killed him, she was given the death penalty.

Individuals within certain Chinese, Japanese and other (South) East Asian cultures, legally sanctioned the killing of unfaithful wives by their husbands to protect family honor. In some (past and present) South Asian, Indian and/or Hindu cultures, new wives are at times murdered by their husbands because of failed dowry demands. The killings are sometimes carried out by burning the victims to death through "accidental" kitchen fires. The prior practice i.e. the honor motivated killing of adulterous wives, occurred within (certain) Germanic tribes of Western Europe as well. [link]

In Ancient Roman times, the pater familias, or senior male within a household, retained the right to kill an unmarried but sexually active daughter or an adulterous wife. Even in the United States, until recent times, wife-killings by husbands (especially against adulterous wives - whether or not they were premeditated) were not considered a crime in some jurisdictions. Such practices, to a large extent, have ceased to be endemic in North America, although some immigrants from North Africa and the Near East (for example) have brought the practice with them in recent decades. [link]

Based on proof

In the Valley of Mexico from 150 BCE - 1521 CE, the punishment for female adultery was death by stoning or strangulation, but only after the husband could prove the offence. According to interpretations of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the Halakha (Jewish law) punishes certain sexual misconduct for both men and women, with capital punishment [link] as approved by a court (or Sanhedrin). The Sanhedrin's requirements for burden of proof, however, are so strict that this punishment was never meted out and was never sanctioned outside of the court. [[Citing sources citation needed]]

Honor killings, generally considered premeditated, are typically held to be distinct from Crimes of passion, which occur throughout the world. Crimes of passion often have special status under the law. For instance, until 1975, the French Penal Code commuted the sentence of a husband who killed his wife after finding her in the act of committing adultery; [link] this law passed into the legal frameworks of the many nations who based their modern legal codes on the Napoleonic Code. Thus, Crimes of passion are different from honor killings, in the sense that they are spontaneous acts that aren't planned. Furthermore, many honor killings (along with some Crimes of passion) are based on sheer suspiscion as opposed to (what appears to be) factual proof, in relation to the idea that an individual has committed or been involved in an "undesirable act", in the mind of the perpetrator(s). [link]

Locations

As of 2004, honor killings have occurred at the hands of individuals within parts of various countries, such as Albania, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy [#endnote_ab-20050728], Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Sweden, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the United States. Honor killings are more common among poor rural communities. In Europe, honor killings have mostly been reported within some Muslim and Sikh communities. Individual Arab Christians living within parts of the Near East, such as sections of Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, are said to sometimes carry out the act as well. [link] Many cases of honor killings have been reported in Pakistan. In December 2005, Nazir Afzal, director of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, stated that the United Kingdom has seen "at least a dozen honor killings" between 2004 and 2005. [link] Critics argue that the practice is over-whelmingly associated with certain Muslim cultures and the peoples influenced by those cultures. [link]

Honor killing as a cultural practice or religious practice

Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University states that honor killing is:

A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Arab society... What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. The honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility, or reproductive power.
An Amnesty International statement adds:
The mere perception that a woman has contravened the code of sexual behavior damages honor. The regime of honor is unforgiving: women on whom suspicion has fallen are not given an opportunity to defend themselves, and family members have no socially acceptable alternative but to remove the stain on their honor by attacking the woman. [link]

In countries with Islamic law

There is no specific mention of honor killing in the Qur'an or Hadiths. Although, for some [[[Citing sources citation needed]] An honor killing, in Islamic definitions, refers specifically to extra-legal punishment by the family against the woman, and is technically forbidden by the Sharia (Islamic law). Some Islamic religious authorities and Muslims in general, disagree with extra-legal punishments such as honor killing and prohibit it, since they consider the practice to be a cultural issue. They believe that since certain pre-Islamic cultures have influence over a number of Muslims, murderers of females use Islam to justify honor killing, even though there is no support for the act in the religion itself. However, honor killings cannot always be punished according to many interpretations of Islamic law, as murders are a type of "qisas" ("retaliation") crime. This means that the deceased's family should be offered the choice of capital punishment or "diya" ("blood money") and no execution can take place without them opting for death. Because a relative(s) is responsible for the honor killing, it is unlikely that the deceased's family will punish one of their own for the crime. [link]

Traditional interpretations of Islamic law (or Sharia) prescribe severe punishments for zina, or extramarital sex, by both men and women. This is not a new practice; it has been around since ancient times and has been practiced by other religions and cultures as well. Premarital sex could be punished by up to 100 lashes, while adultery is punishable by stoning. The act of sexual penetration must, however, be attested by at least four male Muslim witnesses of good character, the accused has a right to testify in court, the suspect's word or testimony is required to hold the most weight in the eyes of the judge(s), punishments are reserved to the legal authorities and the law states that false accusations are to be punished severely. [link] [link] The former regulations also make some Muslims believe, that the process' goal was to eventually abolish the physical penalties relating to acts of fornication and adultery, that were already present within many societies around the world when Islamic teachings first arose. According to this view, the principles are so rigorous in their search for evidence, that they create the near impossibility of being able to reach a verdict that goes against the suspect in any manner. [link]

The execution of the Saudi Arabian princess Misha'al is an example of an honor killing, in which the execution did not follow any Islamic religious court proceeding, but was ordered directly by her grandfather.

Interpretations of these rules vary. Some Arabs regard it as their right under both tradition and Sharia (by the process of urf), though this contradicts the views of many Islamic scholars (fuqaha). Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran has condemned the practice as "un-Islamic", though punishment under Iranian law remains lenient. In certain (Sufi influenced) Muslim regions like Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, honor killings are little known, as also in parts of West Africa with majority-Muslim populations and many other Muslim countries. [link] According to Sheikh Atiyyah Saqr, former head of the al-Azhar University Fatwa Committee (one of the oldest and most prestigious in the Muslim world):

Like all other religions, Islam strictly prohibits murder and killing without legal justification. Allah, Most High, says, “Whoso slayeth a believer of set purpose, his reward is Hell for ever. Allah is wroth against him and He hath cursed him and prepared for him an awful doom.” (An-Nisa’: 93) The so-called “honor killing” is based on ignorance and disregard of morals and laws, which cannot be abolished except by disciplinary punishments. [link]
This opinion makes a clear distinction between "hudud" crimes, which have specified legal penalty in Islamic law, and "ta`zir" offenses, which can have a discretionary punishment decided by the judge. Honor killings are ta'zir crimes, not hudud ones meaning that any punishment is culturally defined.

Honor killing in national legal codes

According to the report of the Special Rapporteur submitted to the 58th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (2002) concerning cultural practices in the family that reflect violence against women (E/CN.4/2002/83):

The Special Rapporteur indicated that there had been contradictory decisions with regard to the honour defence in Brazil, and that legislative provisions allowing for partial or complete defence in that context could be found in the penal codes of Argentina, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Peru, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela and the Palestinian National Authority. [link]
Some of these, including those of Turkey, have since been abrogated.

Countries where the law can be interpreted to allow men to kill female relatives in a premeditated effort as well as for crimes of passions, in flagrante delicto in the act of committing adultery, include:

Countries that allow men to kill female relatives in flagrante delicto (but without premeditation) include: Countries that allow husbands to kill only their wives in flagrante delicto (based upon the Napoleonic code) include: Countries where honor killing is not legal but is frequently ignored in practice include:

Note

  1. ↑  The defence of non-premeditated killing of a wife caught in adultery in Italy was legally abolished in 1981 (Legge 442/81)

See also

References and further reading

External links

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