Shame.

The shame of honour crimes – The Globe and Mail.

This morning in today’s Globe and Mail, Sheena Khan talks about her community’s responsibility to educate and influence immigrants to leave behind the violent ways of the old country. It is a thoughtful piece and suggests an approach such as Cease Fire in Chicago that has been successful in dealing with violent young men.

Rereading a short story of Conan Doyle this morning, I was reminded that little more than one hundred years ago in England an man could brutalize his wife and children with no interference from the law. When the women’s movement achieved success in the campaign to have women declared persons under the law, such behaviour was recognized as criminal and treated that way.

In the  last paragraph, Ms Khan writes that “women are dead because they breached their families’ honour.” No they are not. They are dead because they attempted to live as free human beings and some man or men decided they shouldn’t. These men and their complicit families have no honour.

Murdering women and girls in the name of male “honour”

Young women are dying around the world because their family (read male) honour has been damaged by their behaviour. This is primitive barbaric nonsense.

The first link below details the murder in Brampton of a teenage girl. Not of any particular religion, she died at home, killed by her father and stepmother. No motive given.

The second link, a young woman killed by her brother and father, because she behaved like a normal Canadian teenager, rebelling against a lifestyle that condemned her to complete control by any and all males in her family.

The national geographic article and the one from the UN tells us how many girls are killed for reasons like this one, or because she didn’t bring enough dowry! The marriages of course went forward, the dowry taken, the girl killed and then, I suppose another took her place, so that the groom’s family collected twice.

The UN article makes it clear that this is institutionalized violence against women, with no or little penalty because of the “honour” involved, or the religion.

It is and always has been about control, power, and money. The religious argument is a convenient screen behind which violent abusers may hide. The screen should be removed; the perpetrators revealed for the abusing cowards that they are. There is no difference between the deaths of the young girl in Brampton and the young girl in Toronto. Both killed by the males in their family, whose duty should have been to protect them. They are murderers and child abusers, nothing more. And they never had any honour to lose.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/15/brampton-teen-homicide.html

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2010/06/15/parvez-guilty-plea.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/02/0212_020212_honorkilling.html

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33971&Cr=violence+against+women&Cr1