WUNRN
Website Link Includes Video.
NEW WEBSITE BRINGS DIGNITY TO
VICTIMS OF HONOR VIOLENCE
Shubhi Tandon – Women News Network – WNN
According to the United Nations and The
International Campaign Against Honor Killing at least five thousand women and girls
worldwide are murdered each year to preserve ‘family honour’. Many of these women are killed for making personal choices
that don’t match the limits placed on them by their families and local society.
These killings occur in societies where the
control of women’s behaviour is the factor at the forefront of defining the
standing of men among their peers.
Personal choices come in conflict with a family’s
‘honour’ when a young woman begins to ask – Who do I want to be my
life-partner?; What if I don’t want an arranged marriage?; How do I want to
dress in public?; What music do I want listen to?; How can I own my own
business?; Can I attend a university of my choice?; When will I be able to sing
in public, or go dancing?; Can I ask for a divorce if my husband beats me?; Can
I attend school?
These questions can bring danger in a society
where women and girls are expected to follow strict guidelines.
Judged heavily for such basic freedoms as personal
career choices, education, styles of dress, choice of friends and even the
number of children they wish to have, women who have become victims of honor
violence are trapped in a never-ending cycle of self-denial.
Launched in April 2011 to give a digital memorial
to the victims of honor crimes worldwide, a new website called Memini, which
means ‘remembrance’ in Latin, outlines the lives of twenty-five women who have
been murdered through honour violence.
Created by award-winning Norwegian filmmaker,
composer and celebrity pop singer Deepika Thathaal known as Deeyah by her fans,
the Memini site brings an unforgettable look at the haunting faces of honor
violence.
Each face on Memini shows a haunting desire to
live.
Honour Killings are collective and
premeditated murders intended to restore the social position and family
honour.
Born in
“Honour Killings represent the ultimate in control
and oppression of women”, says Deeyah.
Family members (or friends of the family) are
often the ones who carry out the killing in these murders. The violence in
honor crimes can be found worldwide.
This severe form of violence against women
expressed as honour violence exists today on all continents. Specifically, it
can be found within
“The perpetrators of these honour motivated crimes
want all signs of the lives of these young women to be completely wiped out –
almost as if these young women never existed in the first place,” explains
Deeyah.
Today honour killings are seen across
religious communities and are not limited to one group only.
“I reported the incident to the police, but they
didn’t take me seriously,” said Turkish born Kurdish immigrant to Sweden,
Fadime Sahindal, as she shared to police her first experience reporting
personal threats by family members in a formal meeting of the Sweden’s
parliament, November 21, 2001.
Less than two months after her speech before the Parliament
of Sweden, Sahindal was shot dead at the hand of her father, an illiterate
Kurdiah farmer who had moved to Sweden in 1980 as she dared to travel against
her fathers wishes to visit the grave of an ‘unapproved’ Swedish boyfriend who
had been killed in a car accident.
“He said I was rejected from the family and was
not allowed to come back to
While women are not the only ones who suffer from
this crime, women and girls make up the majority of victims.
“Many factors such as gender, age, place of
residence, education, and tribal and kinship relations, affect how honor is
perceived and the place it has in people’s lives”, says, “The Dynamics of Honor
Killings in Turkey” (Feb 2007) by the UNDP – Population Association at the
United Nations Development Programme and the UNFPA – United Nations Population
Fund.
Women can become targets of honour based
violence for exercising their right to choose their own life partner, career or
even how they dress.
In
Those who work in the field to fight against
honour crimes are constantly faced with the same basic question over and over
again: “But what can be done to stop honour killings?”
Documenting twenty-five immigrant women and girls
from diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds who died from honour killings
around the world, the Memini site exists as an ongoing project. Many cases
include immigrant women.
One case includes the murder of 26 year-old mother
of two, Surjit Athwal, who travelled in 1998 from her home in the
The very core of the concept is basic, it is the
control of women and their behaviour, if they transgress they will be punished,
honour killings being the ultimate price a young woman pays and it is the
ultimate betrayal by a family of their own child.
What began as a missing-persons inquiry in 1998
with interviews made in the Indian village where Athwal was last seen ended as
a landmark 2007
Encouragement for women and girls to
expose threats and seek immediate and long-standing protection is of prime
importance.
Anthwal, who was married at the age of 16, was
planning to leave her husband and had filed for divorce before she left on her
wedding trip. She never did return. Her body was never found.
“An Honour Killing is a planned, group decision.
It’s a pre-meditated, collective decision. Basically, it’s an ‘organised
crime’”, says Deeyah.
Another case, 16 year old Heshu Yones was murdered
by her father for having a relationship with a classmate. Similarly, 25 year
old Sandeela Kanwal, was also a victim of murder at the hands of her father for
asking for a divorce to end an unhappy marriage.
Even though legislation in Lebanon became more
stringent with honor-based crimes in 1999, a loop-hole exists in Article 252 of
the penal code that allows sentences against honor crimes to be commuted if the
violence stems from anger against the victim because the victim has been
involved in an ‘unjust and dangerous act’, particularly an act that involves
what is perceived as ‘adultery’.
The perpetrator of this crime’s goal is to erase
the lives of their victims. To erase their presence. To completely remove the
“stain” of their existence from this earth.
In 1989 Jordanian journalist and author of the
book, “Murder in the Name of Honour”, Rana Husseini, collected 159,000
signatures to help change the laws covering honor violence in
In the meantime, Memini hopes to keep the memory
and dignity of victims alive through an expanding online memorial archive.