Monday, April 28, 2008
Elder of Ziyon
Pakistan:
Three weeks since Jagdeesh Kumar, a 22-year-old Hindu worker in a garment factory in Pakistan's largest city, was beaten to death by a mob for allegedly making blasphemous remarks about Prophet Mohammad, his murderers remain unpunished.
..."His murder may have nothing to do with blasphemy. What we saw was an honour killing, coloured as a killing for blasphemy. Most, if not all, of the cases of killing for blasphemy have a different, more mundane and criminal reason. Blasphemy provides a cover," says Nayyar. He has reason to believe that the Hindu boy was in love with a Muslim girl.
Kurdistan:
MORTALLY wounded and bleeding profusely, Pela Atroshi covered her head with her hands, pleading "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me".Iraq:
As her sister and her mother screamed, her uncle Rezkar Atroshi raised his gun and killed her. The family's honour had been cleansed.
Rezkar had already shot Pela twice in the back in the upstairs room.
Helped downstairs by her mother and her younger sister, the 19-year-old Kurdish Swede was confronted by four resolute men - her father and his three brothers. The men pulled the women apart. Her youngest uncle then finished the job, shooting Pela in the head.
The bullet went through one of her fingers and into her brain.
The decision to kill her was made by a council of male relatives, led by Pela's grandfather, Abdulmajid Atroshi - a Kurd who lived in Australia.
One of his sons, Shivan Atroshi, helped pull the women away from Pela so his younger brother could get a clean shot. Shivan, too, lived in Australia.
Pela Atroshi's murder in Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was officially deemed an honour killing by both Iraqi and Swedish authorities.
A 17-year-old Iraqi girl was murdered by her father in an honour killing after falling in love with a British soldier she met while working on an aid programme in Basra, it has been claimed.
A total of 47 young women died in honour killings in the city last year, Basra Security Committee told an investigation into Ms Abdel-Qader's case by The Observer. This is believed to be the only case of an honour killing involving a British soldier.
More from Iraq:
At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene.Birmingham, UK:
The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her "honour killing" is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a "genocide" against women in the name of religion.
In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.
Du'a Khalil Aswad, 17, from Nineveh, was executed by stoning in front of mob of 2,000 men for falling in love with a boy outside her Yazidi tribe. Mobile phone images of her broken body transmitted on the internet led to sectarian violence, international outrage and calls for reform. Her father, Khalil Aswad, speaking one year after her death in April last year, has revealed that none of those responsible had been prosecuted and his family remained "outcasts" in their own tribe.
"My daughter did nothing wrong," he said. "She fell in love with a Muslim and there is nothing wrong with that. I couldn't protect her because I got threats from my brother, the whole tribe. They insisted they were gong to kill us all, not only Du'a, if she was not killed. She was mutilated, her body dumped like rubbish."
Two police forces were accused today of "letting down" an honour killing victim when she told officers she feared for her life in the months before her murder.Pakistan:
The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) criticised failings in the handling of Banaz Mahmod's complaints against her family.
She asked police for help four times, even giving officers a list of men she thought would harm her, but was not taken seriously.
Miss Mahmod, 20, disappeared from her home in Mitcham, south London, in January 2006, and her body was found buried in a suitcase in a garden in Birmingham three months later.
Following an Old Bailey trial her father and uncle were jailed last July for her "barbaric" murder.
A man shot dead his daughter on suspension of having illicit relations in Nishatabad Police Station precinct here Wednesday.Sheffield, UK:
THREE Asian men were locked up this week for their part in the "mob violence" that led to the death of an Iraqi Kurd on the streets of Sheffield.Israel:
Ismail Rashid, aged 42, was the victim of an 'honour killing', beaten to death because he had been sleeping with a married Pakistani woman. A gang of up to 20 attacked him at the corner of Lifford Street and Norborough Road in Tinsley in June last year and he died in the Northern General Hospital eight days later, despite brain surgery.
Police suspect a 19-year-old male from the village of Rama was involved in the killing of his cousin in her Haifa apartment a year and a half ago. Anan Hessin is suspected to have murdered his cousin Rim Kassem in an honor killing on January 10, 2007.Jordan:
A Jordanian man has been charged with premeditated murder after his 35-year-old daughter was shot dead in an apparent honor killing, a judicial source said on Thursday.
"The suspect was arrested on Wednesday following a complaint by his other daughter that he killed and buried her sister several months ago in the (northern) city of Rasta," the source told AFP.
"The man was charged after he confessed to murdering his daughter to cleanse the family's honor because she frequently disappeared from home."
Jordanian authorities recorded a total of 17 so-called honor killings in 2007, slightly up on previous years.
