Heshu Yones, Bakhan Bibi, Jasveer, Fadime Sahindal, Rania Arafat: they came from different countries, and they probably never knew each other while they lived. What ties them together, along with hundreds of other men and women, is the manner of their deaths.
The term “honour killing” is used to describe an act for which we have a much shorter word: murder. They are murders “sanctioned” by the community, or the family, or the prevalent culture, as just compensation for the perceived transgressions of women against a much-debated code of “honour”.
Heshu Yones, 16, was killed by her father in London after he discovered that she planned to elope. Bakhan Bibi and four members of her family were gunned down in Okara by her husband, who suspected her of having an affair.
Jasveer was the husband of Geeta Rani, from Hoshiarpur in Punjab: he had his hands and legs cut off before he was killed by Geeta Rani’s family, who objected to him being from a different caste. By marrying him, Geeta Rani had brought “dishonour” to the community. Fadime Sahindal was murdered by her father for falling in love with a Swedish man. And Rania Arafat, who had also committed the crime of falling in love with someone unsanctioned, was betrayed by her aunts. They took her out for a walk, stepped aside at one point, and allowed Rania’s brother to shoot her.
If honour has been restored by the deaths of these women and, in many cases, men, you have to ask what kind of perverted “honour” would require blood sacrifice. This week, Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan are contemplating changing the local laws on honour killings. Turkey has taken steps to treat “honour killings” as the murders they are; Pakistan’s National Assembly was dissolved in an uproar, after a woman lawmaker demanded that those who carry out honour killings be punished, and one of her male counterparts defended the practice as part of “tribal custom”.
The issue over honour killings has been in the news ever since a recent bestseller on the supposed honour killing of the author’s friend in Jordan has been exposed as a fake. While Norma Khouri, the author, is being reviled by activists, the controversy has also drawn attention to the situation in Jordan, where until recently a sentenced honour killer could serve as little as six months in prison.
The justification for honour killings is as old as the hills, and stems from a familiar fear: what would happen if women were allowed to be free, to exercise choice, to walk away from domestic chores to demand their rights? The men who support such women are seen as doubly culpable — traitors to the tribe and to their gender. Those who defend the practice take shelter behind the fig-leaf of “cultural custom”, and accuse their detractors of being “insensitive” to their traditions.
We need to see “honour killings” in the same way as we view “normal” murders: as an abomination, a sin against the order of nature, one of the worst crimes in the calendar of humanity. And we need to hold not just the killers guilty, but the people who support them: the families who don’t ostracise them, the mothers, aunts and sisters who urge the killers on, the men who lend their approval to this butchery. The fathers who kill their daughters, the brothers who kill their sisters, are guilty — but so is everyone who applauds from the sidelines, or sits back in silence.
