Nearly 600 Women Killed in Pakistan 'Honour Killings' in
2006
At least 565 women and girls
in Pakistan died in so-called honour killings in 2006, the country’s main rights
organisation said today, nearly double the number it recorded the year
before.
The sharp increase from 287 in 2005 was due "at least in part" to
expanded data collection, the privately funded Human Rights Commission of
Pakistan said in its annual report.
However, it said many more cases may
have gone unreported and has estimated in the past that the annual total may be
about 1,000.
Many men in deeply conservative rural areas of Pakistan
consider it an insult to family honour if female relatives have an affair
outside of wedlock or even if they marry without their consent.
Some view
attacking or killing the women or their partners as a way to restore family
honour.
In the report
released today, the commission said at least 475 of last year’s honour killings
followed accusations of “illicit relations".
Sixty of the dead were
minors.
Arrests were made in only 128 cases, it said.
The
treatment of women in Pakistan has been under scrutiny since the gang-rape of a
woman in 2002 as punishment for her brother’s alleged affair with another woman
attracted global media attention after she publicly spoke about her
ordeal.
Mukhtar Mai has since become an icon for women
rights.
Under pressure over her case, president gen Pervez Musharraf in
December signed an amendment to an Islamic rape law to make it easier to
prosecute sexual assaults.
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