Honor Killings

Honour killing: Father kills daughter

HYDERABAD: In yet another suspected case of honour killing, a father forced his daughter to consume pesticide for allegedly falling in love with a person of another caste in the neighbouring Mahabubnagar district.

Though it was alleged that the girl was killed for falling in love, the girl's relatives complained that she was killed as her father and stepmother does not want to bear the burden of performing her marriage.

The incident took place in Vatvarlapally village on the Hyderabad-Srisailam road late Monday night. The 16-year-old girl, Padma, recently completed her SSC.

Her father D Mallaiah was an agriculturalist. Mallaiah was married thrice and the victim is the daughter of his first wife.

According to police, Mallaiah suspected that the girl fell in love with a boy of the same village. “We are yet to ascertain whether the girl was in love with the boy or not,” Amrabad DSP P Karunakar said. Locals, however, alleged that Mallaiah was angry that his daughter fell in love with a boy who does not belong to their caste.

On Monday night, Mallaiah and his wife Tirupatamma forced the girl to consume pesticide in the house.

She died within minutes after consuming the pesticide.

Villagers informed the matter to the girl's relatives who in turn called the police on Tuesday morning.

“The girl's relatives complained that she was killed by her parents as they felt it was a burden to perform her marriage,'' Karunakar said.

Police registered a case and investigations are on

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/honour-killing-father-kills-daughter/174452-60-121.html

Ariz. Honor Killing: Police Worried Family Members Might Have Tried to Attack Daughter Again

In 2009, 20-year-old Noor Al-Maleki was killed after her father, Faleh Al-Maleki, ran her over with his car in Peoria, Ariz. She suffered multiple injuries and went into a coma. She was taken off life support and died less than two weeks later.

Prosecutors said it was an honor killing, because the Iraqi-born young woman who immigrated to the United States had become “too Westernized” and brought shame to the family for eschewing traditional Iraqi values — shunning an arranged marriage and instead living with a boyfriend and his parents.

In February, Faleh was found not guilty of murder in the first degree, but was convicted of murder in the second degree. He is currently serving a 34 1/2 year sentence.

Now, audio records obtained by Fox News show that police believed Noor would be attacked again by family members, even as she lay unconscious in a hospital bed.

In one tape, Peoria police detective Bill Laing refuses to tell Noor’s mother, Seham Al-Maleki, where her daughter was until her father — who at first fled to the United Kingdom before being extradited back — was found. Laing tells Seham that her husband ran over Noor and her friend Amal Khalaf:

“I want to see my daughter!” Seham Al-Maleki screams on the tape.

“Until he [Noor’s father] is located, we are not mentioning where she is at,” responds Laing, who told the mother that witnesses in the parking lot identified her husband as the driver.

“This woman, she is lying, because she is dirty,” Seham says, referring to Noor’s friend Khalaf, who survived being hit by Al-Maleki’s jeep.

“You are a sick person,” Laing snaps.

Mohamed El-Sharkawy of the Arizona Muslim Police Advisory Board told Fox News that authorities worried another family member might try to attack Noor again to be sure she was dead.

“They were afraid that, because he did not succeed, that somebody else, his son or a relative, will go and finish her off,” El-Sharkawy said.

Faleh Al-Maleki was convicted of second-degree murder for his daughter's killing. (Fox News)

Although Faleh was convicted of second-degree murder, because he was acquitted of first-degree murder, prosecutor Laura Reckart told Fox in an interview that she felt she had ultimately “failed” Noor.

“I’m not going to say I respect their verdict,” Reckart said.

During the trial, she played recorded prison phone calls of Faleh talking with his wife, discussing how “an Iraqi without honor is nothing” and even though he was in jail, Noor “is comfortable now” in her grave.

Still, Judge Roland Steinle told Fox he believed it was wrong to classify Noor’s murder as an honor killing:

“I think it sensationalizes what is nothing more than a parent killing a child,” he said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ariz-honor-killing-police-worried-family-members-might-have-tried-to-attack-daughter-again/

Rape and Mutilation

"Honor Killings" are only part of the issue. Another part of the issue is that these violent acts appear to be more common now in the United States. Whether that is true or just my perception really does not matter. What matters is the silence from Womens Rights groups here. Why have these groups not demanded that our government stop paying the governments where these acts are practiced with impunity?

Rape, mutilation: Pakistan`s tribal justice for women

MULTAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - On April 14, two men entered Asma Firdous' home, cut off six of her fingers, slashed her arms and lips and then sliced off her nose. Before leaving the house, the men locked their 28-year-old victim inside.
Asma, from impoverished Kohaur Junobi village in Pakistan's south, was mutilated because her husband was involved in a dispute with his relatives, and they wanted revenge.
Her fate is familiar in parts of Pakistan's remote and feudal agricultural belts, where women are often used as bargaining chips in family feuds, and where the level of violence they face is increasing in frequency and brutality.
At the hospital in nearby Multan town, Asma's shocked parents sat quietly by her bedside and struggled to explain what the future holds for their now disfigured daughter.
"I don't know what will happen to her when she leaves here," Asma's father, Ghulam Mustafa, said, in a dilapidated ward heavy with the smell of antiseptic and blood, where other women, doused with acid or kerosene by relatives or fellow villagers, awaiting an equally uncertain future.
Asked if Asma will return to her husband, her father remains silent.
Pakistan is the world's third-most dangerous country for women, after Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, based on a survey conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation (http://link.reuters.com/jet92s)
In its 2010 report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says almost 800 women were victims of "honour killings" -- murders aimed at preserving the honour of male relatives -- and 2,900 women reported raped -- almost eight a day.
The bulk, or almost 2,600, were raped in Punjab alone, Pakistan's most populous province.
And the numbers are rising: media reports say crimes against women have risen 18 percent in the year to May and the human rights commission believes its figures represent only a fraction of the attacks which take place across the country.
Dr. Farzana Bari, director of Gender Studies at Quaid-e-Azam University, says Pakistan's patriarchal society often condones discrimination against women, which is more prevalent among poor and uneducated rural families.
That mindset can often influence the police and judiciary, which sometimes turn a blind eye to honour killings or rapes carried out to "punish" women.
"I think honour killings are a symptom of vigilante justice," she said. "And vigilante justice occurs in an environment where the state is unable to enforce its writ."

TRIBAL JUSTICE
In rural areas, women are often shut out of the justice system, which is compromised by powerful landowners and feudal lords who dominate a hierarchy that makes it difficult -- and deadly -- for those with little education or social standing to speak out.
Families or tribes then often take justice in their own hands, presiding over "jirgas" or "panchayats" -- gatherings of elders that hand down punishments that include rape, killing or barter of women for crimes that include falling in love with a man deemed inappropriate or besmirching family honour.
Some women are maimed just to settle scores.
Members of the panchayat systems say the tradition is hard to shake because it is entrenched in the local culture and also because it is much more efficient than the regular courts.
"In the settled areas there are courts but people can't always get justice or compensation," said lawyer and tribal elder Karim Masoud, who presides over both panchayat settlements and the mainstream court system.
"With the jirgas, they can get compensation, and it takes less time to settle a dispute. It's fairer and people don't have to use bribes to get justice."
Zarmuhamad Afridi, who also attends jirga rulings in Pakistan's northern tribal belt and works within the mainstream court system, said the jirga system survives because in many parts of Pakistan, a man's honour is intrinsically linked to how his wife or daughter behave.
"If a couple is not married and they are having a relationship, a jirga may rule that the woman should be shot," Afridi said. "That is okay for many, because they have to protect family honour."
The slightest transgression by a woman -- being seen talking to a man on the street, perhaps, or having an unknown phone number in a mobile -- can bring harsh punishment and social ostracism of the family, he says, making the quick, harsh judgment of the panchayats popular.
"Women are cherished here," he said. "Men protect them. If a woman is out of her house then what is she doing? That is what people think here."
Many women are unable to speak out because they lack the support and education to understand their rights, activists say.
But even those who dare often get nowhere.
The most high profile instance of a violent ruling by a tribal court against a woman is that of the gang rape of Mukhtaran Mai, which took place near Multan in 2002.
Mai was allegedly attacked to settle a matter of village honor, as decided by a panchayat. She was then paraded naked through her village.
Unlike most rape victims, who face stark recriminations for speaking out, and who are sometimes even expected to commit suicide, she filed a criminal case against 14 men.
Six men were convicted and sentenced to death that year, but in 2005 the Lahore High Court commuted one sentence to life in prison and acquitted the rest.
Pakistan's Supreme Court upheld that decision in April this year, in what rights activists said was a crushing blow to women's and minority rights in Pakistan.
The men were released days later. Mai said she is afraid they will return and kill her.
Ali Dayan Hasan, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch's South Asia division, said the lack of justice for women in cases like such as Mai's is "a structural failing of the criminal justice system".
"The verdict also lays bare the misogyny of Pakistan's judicial system because it is a judiciary that is instinctively unsympathetic to women."
(Editing by Chris Allbritton and Miral Fahmy)