Pakistan criminalizes honor killing

Last week, Pakistan’s parliament unanimously passed legislation against “honor killings.” The law mandates life imprisonment, or 25 years in prison, for convicted murderers even if the victim’s relatives forgive them.

The law was approved three months after an outspoken social media celebrity, Qandel Baloch, was drugged and strangled by her brother, Waseem Baloch, in the family home outside of Multan, in the province of Punjab.

Qandel’s brother was reported as saying he was “proud of what I did” because “she was bringing dishonor to the family.” His sister, a bold 25-year-old, was known for her daring and risqué social posts. In her last post, she said she wanted to “change the typical orthodox beliefs of people who don’t wanna come out of their shells of false beliefs and old practices.” A few days later, her brother killed her.

Wikipedia defines honor killings as karo-kari, a Sindhi term, the term for the homicide of a member of a family or social group due to the belief the victim had brought dishonor upon the family or community. The victim’s death is viewed as a way to restore the reputation and honor of the family.

According to Wikipedia, karo-kari  originally were metaphoric terms for adulterer and adulteress. But it became used with regard to multiple forms of “perceived immoral behavior.”  Once a woman is labeled as kari, family  members consider themselves authorized to kill her, and the co-accused karo in order to restore family honor. In the majority of cases, the victim of the attacks is female, with her attackers being male members of her family or community.

Activists in Pakistan had been working for decades to outlaw honor killings, and the death of Baloch (whose real name was Faucia Azeem), and several other factors have sped up the process. Yasmeen Hassan, global executive director at Equality Now, an international human rights organization, told Newsweek that, following the murder of Baloch, Pakistan’s Sharia council declared honor killings as “un-Islamic.”

Another factor that hastened the landmark parliamentary decision was a documentary film released in March, four months before Baloch’s death by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy about the survivor of an attempted honor killing in Pakistan. The film, “The Girl in the River,” won an Academy Award for Best Documentary short. After viewing  the film, Prime Minister Mian Muhamad Nawaz Sharif said he wanted  to change the law.

Pakistan’s current law is that a family can forgive the perpetrator of the crime under qisas, a provision of Islamic law, “Right now, the crime of murder is a crime against the family and not the state,” said Hassan.

“What happens, particularly in honor crimes, is that the family of the victim and the perpetrator is the same, the family had arranged the killing,” said Hassan. “They would register the complaint of honor crimes murder, and they would immediately forgive the perpetrator.”

After Baloch’s death, according to Reuters, the Pakistan government “took the very rare decision to step in before her family could become the complainant, thus being able to forgive her brother and spare him punishment. The state instead became the complainant.”

In a rare move, police charged Waseem Baloch with crimes against the state. This means he cannot be pardoned even if his and Qandeel’s parents forgive him.

It remains unclear at this point what provisions or punishments will be included in the law, but, said Hassan, “at the very least, we expect that they will make honor killings a non-compoundable offense, which means that you cannot apply the qisas and provisions to it. It would be treated as murder.”

One of the most disturbing honor killing cases in Pakistan occurred in 1999. Samia Imran, 32, was shot in the head and killed by a man believed to be hired by her family. She was trying to get a divorce from a physically abusive husband, but this was rejected by her family.

Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission reported that nearly 1,100 women were murdered in honor killings by relatives in 2015, an increase from about 1,000 in 2014 and 869 in 2013. They were killed for such reasons as  domestic disputes, marrying against the family’s wishes, or having so-called illicit relations.

Anis Haroon, former chair of the National Commission on Status of women, said Qandeel’s death had invoked a strong reaction among activists. “This was a young woman who simply wanted to live her life by her own choice.”  She added, “Enough is enough. We don’t want any more killings in the name of honor. It’s a total falsehood – there is no honor in killing.”

Although  the passage of the anti-honor killing law is a leap forward for women, what needs to be addressed is the Muslim world’s becoming more conservative with respect to women. “The role of women, their function in society, how they appear, how they conduct themselves – they have become politically very charged. We have to start addressing this.”

Some Muslim-majority countries have passed national legislation  or taken severe legal action against the practice  of honor killings. Turkey gives life sentences to perpetrators of honor killings. In 2009, Turkish courts sentenced an entire family to life imprisonment for their involvement in the killing of a young female relative. The government of Jordan has criminalized honor killings, and in 2009 established a special court for prosecuting honor crimes.   The Islamic Supreme Council of Canada announced that “There is no justification for honor killings, domestic violence and misogyny in Islam. These are crimes in the court of law and in the sight of Allah.”

But not all  killings of women are committed in the name of honor. Widney Brow, director of programs for Physicians for Human Rights, told National Geographic that dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a  “similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable.”

Even cultures that do not explicitly support the killing of women still see their women die at the hands of men. The Violence Policy Center reported in September 2015 that 94 percent of female homicide victims (1,438 out of 1,530) in the United States were brutally murdered by either a known male relative or acquaintance. “This should lead us to see that many of our neighbors – even the ones who are in no ways associated with Islam – have internalized a tendency to have their rage transform into violence. At its most basic level, it’s the same horrific impulse.”

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Union Church of Manila Philippines Foundation Inc.,  together with Union Church of Manila and DSH Music will present  “SOS,” a “Sunday Organ Special,”  on  Sunday, Oct 23,  at  the UCM sanctuary in  Legaspi Village, Makati.

To be performed are solo, duo and trio works for organ – Vierne’s Carillon de Westminster, Widor’s Andante Sostenuto from Gothique Symphony, Vitali’s Chaconne for Violin and Organ, and the Philippine premier of Rheinberger’s Op. 149 Trio.

Featured in the concert are organist and composer Alejandro Consolacion II, organist and resident organist of UCM,  Yavet Boyadjiev,  Cuban/American violinist and professor and former chair of Mahidol University in Bangkok, and Renato Lucas, cellist, professor at the University of Santo Tomas, and presently secretary-general of the NMCYA (National Music Competitions for Young Artists).

The concert is held for the benefit of children from depressed communities in Tondo, Mandaluyong and  Quezon City.

Admission is free. Donations will be accepted for the benefit of UNMCPFI’s child education  and nutrition enhancement program or CENEP, a day-care program that prepares a total of 180 pre-school children for formal schooling in three sites – Tondo, Mandaluyong, and Project 8, Quezon City. The program has been running for 13 years in Tondo and Mandaluyong, while the QC site started this school year.

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