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.