SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AP) – She is 18, unmarried and eight months pregnant. She hates it when the baby shifts and kicks in her womb.

“I don’t hate the child,” she said. “But the movements keep reminding me of my past.”

After she gives birth in secrecy, she will give up her child for what she describes as her family’s honor. Then she will travel home to the Kurdish area of northwestern Iran to find a husband who knows nothing of her story.

Secrecy is essential, because in her world, a child out of wedlock can lead to an “honor killing”—her murder by a relative to protect her family’s honor. So she is known in this city only as Banaz, a nickname.

Tarza, 22, also uses a nickname. She sits on a sofa and weeps, wiping her nose with her leopard print head scarf. She gave birth out of wedlock in 2003, a few months after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, and says her male-dominated clan wanted to kill her for sullying their reputation.

Tarza, an Iraqi Kurd, said the threats persist. She lives alone with help from a women’s center that arranged for an Iranian family in Sweden to adopt her child.

“I don’t want to see the child,” Tarza said, her face taut.

Honor killings, driven by the view that a family’s honor is paramount, are an ancient tradition associated with Kurdish regions of Iraq, Iran and Turkey as well as tribal areas in Pakistan and some Arab societies.

While the rest of Iraq is preoccupied with the violence that has followed the U.S. invasion of 2003, the more peaceful Kurdish enclave of the country stands out in its attitude to honor killings. Here, officials who long ignored this explosive and deeply personal issue of family pride are seeking to curb the murders.

Civic activists welcome the regional government’s condemnations of the custom and warnings of tough penalties, but say much more education and law enforcement is needed.

This year, the British government arranged for a delegation of Iraqi Kurds to travel to Pakistan to talk with officials there about their experience in combating the brutal tradition.

Some reports cite several hundred honor killings or related suicides a year in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has more than 4 million people. But there are no reliable statistics for a crime that is difficult to prove without effective law enforcement and the cooperation of tribal communities.

The number of women who committed suicide by setting themselves on fire increased from 36 in 2005 to 133 in 2006, while the murder of women rose from four to 17, according to a report by Kurdistan’s human rights ministry.

The report makes no specific reference to honor killing. But one theory circulating in Kurdistan is that because penalties for murder have been stiffened, more men are resorting to coercing women into killing themselves.

In 2002, Kurdistan’s parliament revoked Iraqi laws that allowed defendants to be cleared or treated leniently in the case of an honor killing. These laws, it is believed, were instituted by Saddam Hussein to curry favor with traditionalists.

“Killing under the pretext of protecting honor is murder,” the region’s prime minister, Nechirvan Barzani, said in July.

Another reason for the changing attitude could be the Western influences that have taken root here since the enclave—the Iraqi part of a historical Kurdish homeland stretching from eastern Turkey to western Iran—became a Western protectorate following the 1991 Gulf War.

“Western culture is growing here and is in contradiction with the old tradition that honor is something sacred,” said Runak Faraj, head of the Rewan women’s center in Sulaimaniyah, one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s two main cities.

She said the values of the young are clashing with tradition, which maintains that pregnancy before marriage or an extramarital affair can be grounds for killing a woman, or pressuring her to commit suicide. Even the hint of a teenage romance lacking elders’ approval can mean death.

Women in Iranian Kurdistan appear freer than in Iraq, able to go out unchaperoned with boyfriends, which suggests Banaz will have an easier time than the Iraqi, Tarza.

Banaz got pregnant in Iran after her boyfriend invited her to a party, and five months later she told one of her four sisters. They asked doctors to abort Banaz’s child, but were refused.

Banaz knew the stigma would stain her two married sisters, and make it hard for her unmarried sisters to find husbands.

She tried to commit suicide by throwing herself from the top floor of her home, but a sister restrained her. She overdosed on pills but vomited them up. She considered dousing herself in gasoline.

“Burning was the final option. I was too scared to do it,” Banaz said in an interview at the Rewan center. She spoke softly, but with confidence, and smiled easily.

Her father found out and sent her to Iraqi Kurdistan, ostensibly on a study trip, but the doctor she consulted in Sulaimaniyah refused to perform an abortion.

She found refuge in Faraj’s center, and will give birth by Caesarean section. Faraj will search for an adoptive family.

Banaz’s family calls her twice a month.

“I think more rationally than emotionally because it’s only one child. My home, my family, my history is in Iran. I have decided not to think about the child anymore,” Banaz said. “I have to show that nothing happened. I have to change what’s in my mind.”

Many women turn up at hospitals with severe burns that doctors suspect are the result of suicide attempts linked to family honor, possibly coerced by male relatives who don’t want to kill the women and face prosecution for murder.

“Before coming to the hospital, they will agree on a story: ‘While she was cooking, that happened. While she was in the bath, that happened,’” said Dr. Ahmed Amin, a medical director of Heartland Alliance, a human rights group based in Chicago.

Cell phones are also part of the problem. According to a columnist in Soma Digest, an English-language newspaper in Kurdistan, there are cases of men dialing randomly until they reach a woman, whom they then harass with more calls or text messages. Saved in the phone’s memory, these raunchy calls can endanger the woman’s life if a male relative discovers them and believes they are from a boyfriend, the newspaper said.

Tarza, the Iraqi Kurd, has had repeated exposure to the world of honor killings.

Last year, she said, one of her two sisters asked for a divorce, and was later found shot to death. The husband was detained for 15 days and released.

Tarza has no contact with her other sister, who was also under threat of death because she became pregnant by a boyfriend. With help from activists, she married another man, severing contact with her family for her own safety.

Her father was killed in a land mine explosion when she was 3 months old. Her mother remarried, but it is too dangerous for Tarza to meet her.

“If somebody learns about it, we could both be killed,” she said. She looked at the floor, her expression hard, clasped her hands and ground them together.

AMMAN – The Criminal Court has sentenced a 27-year-old man to 10 years in prison after convicting him of murdering four of his sisters in Salt last year.

The tribunal declared N. M. guilty of committing murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

But the tribunal immediately reduced his sentence to 10 years because the victims’ family dropped charges against him.

The victims were aged between 20 and 26, according to the court verdict, and one of them was six months pregnant with a male foetus, it added.

The same tribunal acquitted four other male family members, including the victims’ father, from complicity in murder charges and instigating murder, due to a “lack of evidence”.

Almost two years before the incident, one of the victims filed a lawsuit against the defendant accusing him of sexually assaulting her, court transcripts said.

The defendant was tried at the Criminal Court on molestation charges, but was acquitted one month before the murder.

More recently, the court added, the same victim filed a lawsuit accusing her father of sexual assault and he was subsequently arrested and detained.

“The four victims all testified against their father, which angered the defendant so he invited them to dinner to discuss the matter on May 17,” the court said.

During dinner, the court added, the defendant tried to convince his sisters to drop charges or change their testimony as their father would otherwise end up in jail for at least 15 years, but they refused.

“Instead, one of the victims threatened the defendant that she would file a case against him, which angered him and he drew a gun he was carrying and shot them all,” the court said.

Some of the victims tried to escape and run to other rooms, but he followed them and shot them all to death, according to court documents.

The defendant immediately headed to the Balqa Governorate police station, turned himself in and handed the gun used in the shooting to officers on duty, the court added.

The tribunal decided to amend the premeditated murder charges originally levelled against the defendant, because “it was clear… that the murders occurred following a heated argument and not because the defendant plotted to murder his sisters.”

The court also acquitted the defendant of charges of aborting the six-month-old foetus “because his intention was to kill his sister and not the foetus”.

Sunday’s verdict, handed down by judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Azzam Obeidat and Qassim Dughmi, will automatically be reviewed by the Court of Cassation within the next 30 days.

 Jordan Times

AMMAN, 2 October 2007 (IRIN) – Omaima was disposed of within minutes of her birth on 4 September in a rubbish bin. The illegitimate baby, however, was saved thanks to a street cleaner who heard her screaming from her makeshift tomb.

The incident sent a shockwave throughout the conservative kingdom, with local papers dubbing Omaima “the rubbish bin girl”. Sari Nasir, a sociologist at the University of Jordan, showed no surprise at the chain of events that led to this travesty. “Values are stronger than life in Jordan,” he said.

According to police records, every year 20-25 women are killed “in the name of honour”, that is, for having an illicit affair. The killers, and conspirators, get away with murder, after spending a few months in prison.

At least nine women have been killed since the beginning of this year for “honour” reasons, usually resulting from an illicit relationship or adultery or even a suspicion of both, police records show.

In Jordan, any “honour” related incident, is veiled in secrecy and is usually brushed under the carpet before it grabs public attention. The victims are usually women involved, or suspected to be involved, in an affair. “Honour” killings are technically illegal, but tradition and social pressure pose a serious challenge to the rule of law.

Media hype prompts action

But the media hype that surrounded Omaima’s case prompted quick action from the authorities, who discovered that the drama involved Omaima’s natural parents, her grandmother and two aunts.

It is a classic story. A young man and woman from the middle class fall in love. The girl’s family refuses to allow them to marry, leading to a clandestine relationship that leads to pregnancy. Abortion was out of the question, the mother told police during investigations. According to neighbours and the testimonies of the mother and grandmother, delivery took place in a quiet room in the family house, when all the men were away. The grandmother and two sisters of the mother helped in the delivery, ready to send the baby girl straight from womb to tomb.

For now, Omaima, who was named by social workers, lives in a care centre with other children who carry their own heart-wrenching stories. Her parents are to face charges of adultery, which carries a minimum sentence of five years, after the man confessed to his role in the affair. The only way to escape jail is for them to get married, said legal experts.

That is not all. Police also fear Omaima’s mother could be killed after leaving prison. “It has happened before with other unmarried mothers or single women who elope and return, and it will happen again,” said a police official who preferred anonymity.

Protective custody

Young women involved in relationships not sanctioned by their parents are normally kept in protective custody until their family pledges in an official document not to harm the girl.

Police records in Amman show that every year some 20-25 unmarried women involved in “honour” issues are held in protective custody. Most of these, police officials say, were killed hours or days after their release from custody.

Ironically, killers in the name of “honour” often get six months and a hero’s welcome from relatives after they are free.

“Society punishes the baby [Omaima] for the mother’s guilt,” said Nasir. “The story of the baby is a demonstration of how far society is ready to go to protect its honour. This baby girl is an innocent being, but she ended up the most harmed thanks to archaic habits,” said Nasir.

Omaima’s grandmother was given a prison sentence for attempted murder, after confessing she took away the baby girl against her mother’s wish and threw her to die in the rubbish.

“This is an attempted murder and must be dealt with in a tough manner. We must make an example of these people in order to deter others from taking similar action in future,” said Hani Dahleh, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights.

In the past, “honour” crimes were handled discreetly. In some cases the offending women were killed and buried without the knowledge of the authorities.

Taboo issue

Social and religious groups have found a crack in the wall of silence surrounding this taboo issue. Rights activists have been campaigning for years in an attempt to persuade society that life is more important than “honour”. Pressure by local and international human rights groups led to the introduction of a draft amendment to the penal code, which included severe penalties for “honour” killers.

However, the bill was defeated by conservatives and Islamist members of parliament (MP), who said they feared it would destroy morals and encourage adultery.

“It will be a very long time before there is a change in Jordan regarding `honour’ killings,” said former MP Mahmoud Kharabsheh, from the conservative city of Salt. Kharabsheh was one of the MPs who lobbied against amending articles related to “honour” killings, because he feared the “harmful influence of Western culture on this nation”.

Last week, a 90-year-old man from Abu Nusseir village, 30km west Amman, shot dead his 35-year-old daughter because neighbours saw a man leaving her house. The killer confessed he committed the crime to cleanse the family honour. The victim, Khitam, was divorced and lived with her two daughters and a son near her parent’s house.

Rumours are enough to have a young woman killed.

In some cases, autopsies revealed that some victims were virgins, according to Mumen Hadidi, president of the Jordanian Society of Forensic Medicine, who often examines bodies of “honour” crime victims.

But this fact is rarely considered by a court. Dahleh says it is very difficult to separate law in Jordan from the strong grip of social rules.

“As far as the police and the court are concerned, suspicion of an illicit relationship is enough to make one commit an `honour’ crime,” said Dahleh.

IRIN