WUNRN
Vigilantes Kill 40 Women in Iraq's
South
Sunday December 9, 2007
By SINAN
SALAHEDDIN
Associated
Press
BAGHDAD (AP)
- Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern
Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found
with notes warning against ``violating Islamic teachings,'' the police chief
said Sunday.
Maj. Gen.
Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a
strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or
unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional
dress and head scarves, he added.
``The women
of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with
notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior,'' Khalaf told The
Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also
attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and
340 miles southeast of Baghdad.
``Those who
are behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of
religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from
this religion,'' Khalaf said.
Throughout
Iraq, many women wear a headscarf and others wear a full face veil although
secular women are often unveiled. Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the
rise of a Shiite-dominated government, armed men in some parts of the country
have sometimes forced women to cover their heads or face punishment. In some
areas of the heavily Shiite south, even Christian women have been forced to
wear headscarves.
Before the
U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, was known for its
mixed population and night life. Now, in some areas, red graffiti threatens any
woman who wears makeup and appears with her hair uncovered: ``Your makeup and
your decision to forgo the headscarf will bring you death.''
Khalaf said
bodies have been found in garbage dumps with bullet holes, decapitated or
otherwise mutilated with a sheet of paper nearby saying, ``she was killed for
adultery,'' or ``she was killed for violating Islamic teachings.'' In
September, the headless bodies of a woman and her 6-year-old son were among
those found, he said. A total of 40 deaths were reported this year.
``We believe
the number of murdered women is much higher, as cases go unreported by their
families who fear reprisal from extremists,'' he said.
Harith
al-Ithari, who works in the Basra offices of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
said the conservative religious movement opposed the killings and blamed
``gangs with foreign support to destabilize the city.''
``There is a
concrete religious principle that says that wearing makeup and forgoing the
hijab (headscarf) in public is a sin,'' al-Ithari said. ``But killing them is a
sin bigger than this one.''
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