Everywoman looks at the growing number of women in the UK murdered in so-called ‘honour killings’.

Part One:

يمثل اضطهاد المرأة وجهاً آخراً من وجوه التمييز والامتهان الذي كانت تتعرض له الطبقات والفئات الأكثر ضعفاً وتهميشاً في هذه المجتمعات. ومن الجدير ذكره في هذاالسياق، بأن السبي كان شكلاً مقونناً ومشرعناً لعمليات الاغتصاب الجماعي التي رافقتالغزو البدوي لدول الجوار حيث كانت تستباح المدن أياماً طوالاً بلياليها وهذا أمرشائع ومألوف، وقد تمت ممارسته تاريخياً، من قبل فاتحين كبار، ودون التعرض لأية مساءلةقانونية بل تم تصنيفه غالباً في معايير البطولة والجهاد والغزوات، وقد كان المغتصبوالقاتل يكافئ بهتك عرض أجمل الفتيات وسفح شرفها بعد وليمة دم مقززة. ظواهر كثيرة هيالأخرى كانت من هذا القبيل، وهي إحدى أهم إفرازات الثقافة التي حملها البدو الأعرابالغزاة معهم إلى كافة الأمصار التي ابتليت بفكرهم وأصبح وضع المرأة المتردي جراء ذلكواحداً من أهم السمات التي تطبع وجه تلك الثقافة والمجتمعات.

ولعل جرائم الشرف إحدى أوجه تطبيق وممارسة السلوك البدوي وهو موجود في كل تلك الدساتير المأخوذة من فقه البدو الصحراوي وتراثهم الضحل الذي لم يكن يوماً في جانب المرأة والإنسانية المثلى، ولم يوفق البتة في إنصاف المرأة أو في ترقيتها إنسانياً أو إعطائها شيئاً من حقوقها المعترف بها دولياً، برغم كل تلك البلاغة الفقهية الكاذبة التي تحاول تجميل وتزويق وإخفاء واقع مر ومؤلم وراءها.
والشيء بالشيء يذكر، فقد طغت على السطح في الأسابيع القليلة الماضية همروجة بدوية غريبة لا تختلف كثيراً عن جرائم الشرف، بل هي إحدى إفرازاتها المباشرة، غير أن من قام بهذه الجريمة هذه المرة هم الجسم القضائي الموكول إليه، افتراضياً، تطبيق “العدالة”، هذا إذا سلمنا بوجود أي نوع من العدالة لصالح المرأة في الثقافة البدوية على الإطلاق، حيث ارتكب جريمة “شرف” قانونية عبر حكم قضائي لا يخرج في تقييمه عن جريمة شرف بشكل آخر. وبعيداً عن مضاعفات ذاك الحكم وما حظي به من اهتمام على كافة المستويات، فإنه ومن وجهة نظر أخرى، يساهم في تكريس واقع إجرامي ويضفي عليه بعداً قانونياً قدسياً وسماوياً، لن يكون، في المحصلة النهائية، سوى تشجيعاً على البغاء وممارسة الرذيلة سراً وتمادياً في نشر الاغتصاب والتعدي على الحرمات وأعراض النساء، وهو عكس ما يرمي إليه الفقه البدوي ظاهرياً وعدالته السمحاء من أن ذلك الحكم الجائر هو تطبيق للقانون واعتباره انتصاراً لعدالة السماء ومشيئتها في نشر الفضيلة عبر جلد تلك الباغية الزانية المفترية المتهمة بالخلوة مع رجال أغراب. ويمثل حكم الجلد الشرعي الصادر بحق فتاة القطيف ( لا يمثل حكم العفو الملكي الصادر لا حقاً أي فرق هنا من حيث المبدأ، فالتدخل الملكي قد لا يكون متاحاً في كل مرة وهو استثناء لا يبنى عليه قانوناً)، واحداً من العجائب والسوابق القضائية التي يجب أن تسجل في تاريخ العدالة العالمي باعتباره ثمرة فريدة من ثمرات هذه الحضارة البدوية المجيدة. فهو يحاول وبشكل مبطن وخفي أن يضع حداً لأية محاولة ادعاء
لاحقة مستقبلاً من أية مغتصبة من هذا القبيل. فلقد حاولت تلك الثقافة البدوية أن تظهر تاريخياً بمظهر العفة والنقاء والعذرية التي لا تشوبها شائبة، ومن شأن حوادث كهذه أن تفضح زيف ونفاق هذه المزاعم التي حاولت تقمصها عبر مسيرتها، لذا كان من الضروري تماماً قطع الطريق على ضحايا جديدات قد “يعكرن” وجه مجتمعات العفة والفضيلة والحياء، لتترك المجرم، بالمقابل، حراً طليقاً يبحث عن فرائس جديدة يغتصبها بحماية القانون والسماء.
وهذ الحكم لا يساعد في إحقاق الحق ولا بإنصاف المظلومات بل سيكرس الفاحشة والمنكر والجريمة ضد المرأة في كل المجتمعات التي تطاله ثقافة البدو الأعراب. ولن يكون سوى مهزلة قضائية أخرى تضاف لسلسلة المآسي القضائية التي تعيشها هذه المجتمعات منذ فجر التاريخ حيث يكافئ الجناة والمعتدون على الدوام ويتسيدون في هذه المجتمعات. ومن هنا فهذا الحكم وهو من حيث الأثر الفعلي سيشجع على البغاء والزنا والاغتصاب الخفي البعيدج عن طائلة العقاب، والتستر على جرائم اغتصاب قد تحدث في ظروف مماثلة. فقد لا تتجرأ فتيات أخريات سيتعرضن لنفس المصير على البوح أو الشكوى لا للأهل ولا للسلطات القضائية المختصة بما حدث لهن من اعتداء مخافة أن يلاقين نفس مصير فتاة القطيف. ولعمري فإن ذلك يشكل واحدة من سوابق العدالة التي لم تعرفها البشرية على مر التاريخ. وكانت المعالجات القاصرة لهذا النوع من الجرائم اجتماعياً أو قضائياً هي في غير صالح الضحية على الدوام.
فإذا اشتم الأهل رائحة أي “انحراف” لأنثى تحت سلطتهم الأبوية فإن ذلك سيعني حكماً شرعياً بموتها لا عقاب ولا مساءلة قانونية أمامه، وإذا أفلتت الضحية من حد القتل الأسري، وهذا أمر نادر، فإن القضاء سيتكفل عند ذلك بالقصاص من الضحية، وهذا ما رأيناه من الحكم الشرعي الغريب بحق فتاة القطيف وقصته معروفة للجميع. فكم من فتاة بعد ذلك ستغتصب بصمت، وتكبس الجرح ملحاً، وكم من جريمة قتل تحت يافطة الشرف المبررة سترتكب بحق بريئات وعذراوات فهذه وجه آخر لتلك، وكله يصب في خانة الحيف والضيم الواقع ضد المرأة التي لا تقيم لها الثقافة البدوية أية قيمة أو وزن واعتبار. وكم من فحل بدوي “همشري” سيتمادى في وحشيته وسيتباهى بفحولته وإجرامه ويراكم ضحاياه، لعلمه، أن العدالة البدوية العوراء لن تناله، بل ستصب نفس تلك العدالة جام غضبها ضد الضحية التي لا تملك إلا أن تتساءل في سرها وخلدها بأية شريعة قتلت أو جلدت ؟

AMMAN – Criminal Prosecutor Ahmad Omari referred to the court the case of a 23-year-old man who reportedly stabbed his sister to death for reasons related to family honour in Marka in October 2007.

Omari charged the defendant with one count of premeditated murder and illegally possessing a knife.

“The case was referred to the Criminal Court and given a number. The trial date is slated for early next year,” a judicial source told The Jordan Times.

K. M. was charged with stabbing his 25-year-old married sister to death shortly after she was released from police custody to her father, the indictment said.

The victim left her husband’s home on October 14, the charge sheet said, adding that he filed a missing persons report.

The defendant became enraged over his sister’s disappearance. He got hold of a 20-centimetre knife and began looking for her so that he could kill her, the charge sheet said.

On October 22, the police found the woman and contacted her father to take her from Marka Police Station, according to the charge sheet.

It made no mention about where the woman was found or where she had been during the week of her disappearance.

“The defendant took the knife and accompanied his father to the station,” the charge sheet said, adding that the father signed a JD5,000 guarantee that he would not harm his daughter and the three of them went home.

While the victim was walking towards the house, the defendant pulled out his knife and stabbed her 10 times in different parts of her body, the charge sheet said.

He then headed to the nearest police station and turned himself in, claiming to have killed his sister for reasons related to family honour.

Jordan Times

After the invasion of Iraq, the US government claimed that women there had ‘new rights and new hopes’. In fact their lives have become immeasurably worse, with rapes, burnings and murders now a daily occurrence. By Mark Lattimer

They lie in the Sulaimaniyah hospital morgue in Iraqi Kurdistan, set out on white-tiled slabs. A few have been shot or strangled, some beaten to death, but most have been burned. One girl, a lock of hair falling across her half-closed eyes, could almost be on the point of falling asleep. Burns have stretched the skin on another young woman’s face into a fixed look of surprise.

These women are not casualties of battle. In fact, the cause of death is generally recorded as “accidental”, although their bodies often lie unclaimed by their families.

“It is getting worse, especially the burnings,” says Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation based in Kurdistan that works to combat violence against women. “Just here in Sulaimaniyah, there were 400 cases of the burning of women last year.” Lack of electricity means that every house has a plentiful supply of oil, and she accepts that some cases may be accidents. But the nature and scale of the injuries suggest that most were deliberate, she says, handing me the morgue photographs of one young woman after another. Many of the bodies bear the unmistakable signs of having been subjected to intense heat.

“In many cases the woman is accused of adultery, or of a relationship before she is married, or the marriage is not sanctioned by the family,” Khanim says. Her husband, brother or another relative will kill her to restore their “honour”. “If he is poor the man might be arrested; if he is important, he won’t be. And in most cases, it is hidden. The body might be dumped miles away and when it is found the family says, ‘We don’t have a daughter.’” In other cases, disputes over such murders are resolved between families or tribes by the payment of a forfeit, or the gift of another woman. “The authorities say such agreements are necessary for social stability, to prevent revenge killings,” says Khanim.

In March 2004 George Bush said that “the advance of freedom in the Middle East has given new rights and new hopes to women … the systematic use of rape by Saddam’s former regime to dishonour families has ended”. This may have given some people the impression that the American and British invasion of Iraq had helped to improve the lives of its women. But this is far from the case.

Even under Saddam, women in Iraq – including in semi-autonomous Kurdistan – were widely recognised as among the most liberated in the Middle East. They held important positions in business, education and the public sector, and their rights were protected by a statutory family law that was the envy of women’s activists in neighbouring countries. But since the 2003 invasion, advances that took 50 years to establish are crumbling away. In much of the country, women can only now move around with a male escort. Rape is committed habitually by all the main armed groups, including those linked to the government. Women are being murdered throughout Iraq in unprecedented numbers.

In October the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (Unami) expressed serious concern over the rising incidence of so-called honour crimes in Iraqi Kurdistan, confirming that 255 women had been killed in just the first six months of 2007, three-quarters of them by burning. An earlier Unami report cited 366 burns cases in Dohuk in 2006, up from 289 the year before, although most were not fatal. In Irbil, the emergency management centre had reported 576 burns cases since 2003, resulting in 358 deaths.

When questioned, Iraqi doctors have told UN investigators that many of these burnings are self-inflicted. “More than half of these women had sustained between 70-100% burns which, according to doctors, suggested that they were self-inflicted,” the earlier Unami report said. A UN human rights officer has relayed to me the words of one judicial investigator in Irbil: “The woman is unhappy, or there is domestic abuse, but the family doesn’t listen. So she does it because she wants to draw attention to herself.”

The claim that some of these injuries are self-inflicted is something you hear from different quarters in Iraq. The human rights minister in the Kurdistan regional government, Yousif Aziz, says: “[Burnings take] place daily. Some are killed, some burn themselves.” Activists, however, say that if the wounds are self-inflicted, it is because the women have been forced to do it.

The Iraqi penal code prescribes leniency for those who commit such crimes for “honourable motives”, enabling some of the men involved to get off with no more than a fine. The Kurdish authorities, Aziz says, have removed these provisions for leniency from the code – but the killings continue to mount. “The politicians say the situation of women is all right with the new constitution in Iraq and new laws in Kurdistan,” says Khanim, “but it is deteriorating.”

Khanim’s organisation sees cases from across Iraq, including from Baghdad and as far away as Basra. She tells me of a man from Kirkuk who accused his sister of adultery. “When we asked him why he wanted to kill his sister, he said, ‘Because it is now a democracy in Iraq’. He thought that democracy meant he could do whatever he wanted.” But the man’s stupidity hid an important point: under the new system of government developing in Iraq, family disputes are increasingly settled not in state courts but by local tribal or religious authorities. “Not that any religion allows such abuse – it is the culture,” says Khanim. “And we see cases from all the communities, including the Christians. It is even worse outside Kurdistan.”

An Iraqi staff member at the UN mission agrees. “As there is no state authority in Iraq, everyone turns to the local sheikh. Every year since 2003 honour killings have increased.” In just one month last year, 130 unclaimed women’s bodies were counted in the Baghdad morgue, a representative from the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq has told the BBC. Another women’s activist tells me why she refuses all media interviews: “The work has to be secret. In Kurdistan it is possible, but in Baghdad we couldn’t open a shelter for women, we would just be attacked.”

In a nondescript building on a busy road in the north I visit one of the few secret shelters in Iraq for women fleeing violence. A broom-cupboard door is unlocked to reveal a hidden staircase, leading to a two-room apartment where the morning sunshine and the hum of traffic filter through high-set windows. A pile of thin mattresses show that up to 20 women can stay here at any one time. The most recent arrivals are a woman and her two children from the local area. The woman, Zaynab, says she wants to divorce her abusive husband, a drunk, but he has refused. She had gone to live with her mother but he had come to threaten her. “I love my children. My family wanted me to marry again but I don’t want to marry anyone, I want to be with my children.” She stretches her arm out towards the room next door where her curly-haired daughter, eight, and son, seven, are playing.

Nur is here because she helped someone on impulse. Near her home in Diyala she heard the screams of a man locked in a compound and helped him escape. It turned out he was being tortured by a militia group. Later, the militia found out she had helped the man. “My father is dead, I have no brothers, just my mother and my little sister. They can’t protect me.” She fled north to Kirkuk, where she heard about the shelter.

Solaf, the young manager of the shelter, is used to receiving threats herself. (Her name, like those of Nur and Zaynab, has been changed for this article.) With nowhere else for the women to go, she tries to negotiate with their families to see if they can be reconciled, sometimes threatening to take them to court. “Women now know more about human rights, but the men and the culture don’t allow it. Sometimes the family marries off the daughter from a young age – from 12 years old. But even if she stays out shopping too long, they say she is a bad woman.”

I ask about the burnings. “Sometimes the family burns their daughter or wife, because no one can tell. They say in the hospital it was an accident. Some kill themselves.” Solaf can see that I still find it hard to accept that someone, even under duress, would commit suicide by burning herself alive. “You have to realise,” she says, “that the family just locks the girl into a room until she does it. They may leave her a knife, but it is hard to kill yourself with a knife. In one way, it is easier with fire.”

At the Iraqi parliament in Baghdad, the women MPs file into the chamber beside their male counterparts, smiling, arguing, some in white or coloured headscarves, a few in the full-length abaya or the Iranian-style chador, a handful with heads uncovered. Under the new constitution a quarter of the 275 seats are reserved for women, making the level of female representation among the highest in the world. But, as one MP reminds me: “Even getting here is dangerous. People watch you come in.” In 2005, one female MP, Lamia Abed Khadouri, was gunned down and killed on her doorstep.

“If security in Iraq can be provided – and it’s a big if – then we have great hope,” says a Baghdad economics professor who herself survived an assassination attempt last year (and also asked not to be named). “Three years has been a short time for women to be mainstreamed in the political establishment, but women have had the courage to expose themselves as activists. They have a chance to prove themselves outside of the home, to establish NGOs, to work in parliament and in the private sector.” But asked if she believes that security will improve in the long term, her optimism disappears. “No. It is not in the interest of the different groups that make up the government for the security situation to get better. The domination of the religious parties, which is a negative for women, is helped by the insecurity. The ground is emptied for them.”

While the new constitution has empowered women in parliament, she fears that what it has to say about the family may have had the opposite effect in the home. A committee reviewing the constitution is due to present its final amendments to parliament by the end of the year, and an alliance of women’s organisations has been lobbying for the removal of article 41, under which the old statutory family law will be replaced with a new system where marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance will be determined according to the different religions and sects in Iraq.

Campaigners argue that this would strengthen the control of religious institutions and give “constitutional legitimacy to sectarianism”. Most of all they fear an explosion in violence against women as traditional tribal codes take hold.

But only two of the committee’s 27 members are women, and many of the women MPs represent the more conservative religious parties. Some are escorted everywhere by their husbands. A cabinet minister in Baghdad tells me: “The Islamisation had already started under Saddam, but now it is much more pronounced. My young son came to me laughing and showed me what he had in his schoolbook. It was a verse from the Koran saying that when a man has a son in his family he will be happy but when a girl is born he will be sad. They had made them learn that.”

Many meetings for MPs are now held outside the country. One evening earlier this year I joined a group of women MPs in Amman who were attending a UN gathering on women’s rights. During a traditional Jordanian meal of mansaf – lamb cooked in goat yoghurt – one of them, Samira al-Musawi, a member of Iraq’s ruling Shia alliance and chair of the women’s committee in the Iraqi parliament, said: “We are making progress, because now we are a democracy and we can discuss these issues together.” Her faced framed in black, she dismissed the concerns over article 41 and said that “only one or two” members of her committee wanted it changed. Reaching forward for some green salad known locally as zjerzil, she suddenly pulled back. “It is haram – forbidden,” explained her companion, and then in an undertone: “It increases sexual desire.” I broke off a small corner of the leaf. It was a kind of rocket.

At another table, an Arab Sunni MP in a white headscarf disagreed pointedly over article 41. “We want the old law back, we and the Kurds, but the Shia prevent it. You want to know what the situation of women is? How many widows are there now?” But her bitterest comments were reserved for Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Earlier that week three members of the interior ministry’s public order forces had been accused of raping a Sunni woman, who was admitted to a hospital in the government’s fortified green zone compound. Two days later, Al-Maliki publicly rejected the woman’s account and instructed that the policemen should be honoured. “They may have done it, or they may not, but how could he just say she was lying before any proper investigation had been done? He has turned them into heroes.”

The coordinator of a women’s organisation in Baghdad, who asked not to be named, says some groups target women – through kidnapping or sexual assault – “to make a family weak”. “A girl was raped and returned to her family but she committed suicide rather than face the shame. Saddam was a dictator but at least then we had the freedom to go out. Then there was only one criminal – Saddam – but now they are everywhere, you do not know who your persecutor is.”

Claims of rape being used as a weapon of war to humiliate and terrify communities are now frequently made against all the main parties in the conflict, and not just Iraqi forces. Since 2003 US forces have denied numerous allegations that soldiers have raped and abused female detainees or held them as bargaining chips in the hunt for family members wanted as insurgents. But the Pentagon’s Taguba report into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison confirmed that US military police had photographed and videotaped naked women prisoners and referred to a guard “having sex with a female detainee”. Earlier this year, four US soldiers were found guilty of the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza and three members of her family in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad, in an attack the US military had at first blamed on Sunni insurgents. Abeer’s body had been set on fire, her killers believing that their guilt could be burned away.

Rapes carried out against Shia or Christian women have been justified by insurgent groups as revenge for what was done to women in Abu Ghraib. But the extent to which the abuse of women has become both the vehicle and the justification for sectarian hatred in Iraq was demonstrated most chillingly in the April killing of Du’a Khalil Aswad. A 17-year-old from Nineveh, Du’a was stoned in front of hundreds of men, some of whom videoed what happened on their mobile phones.

Climbing steadily past olive groves north of Mosul, the road into Du’a’s home town of Bashiqa is dominated by the conical shrines of the Yezidi sect, an ancient religion that predates both Islam and Christianity. Their veneration of a fallen angel in the form of a blue peacock has led to the common slur in Iraq that the Yezidis are devil-worshippers and the community suffers entrenched discrimination.

After Du’a’s death, the international media widely repeated a claim made on a number of Islamic extremist websites that she had been killed because she converted to Islam, but local reports do not concur. Some people tell me she had run away with her Muslim boyfriend and they had been stopped at a checkpoint outside Mosul; others say she had been seen by her father and uncle just talking with the boy in public and, fearing her family’s reaction, they had sought protection at the police station. Either way, the police handed Du’a into the custody of a local Yezidi sheikh. One woman tells me that after she was stoned in the town square, Du’a’s body was tied behind a car and dragged through the streets.

But the killers’ taste for publicity quickly backfired. As the videos circulated around mobile phones in the region, and were even posted on the internet, Islamic extremists called for Yezidis to be killed in revenge. Meanwhile Du’a’s body was exhumed and sent to the Medico-Legal Institute in Mosul so that tests could be performed to see whether she had died a virgin.

Just after 3pm on April 22 a bus carrying workers from a textile factory in Mosul back to Bashiqa was stopped at a fake checkpoint. Gunmen ordered the Muslims and Christians off the bus and drove it to the east of the city. They then dragged out the Yezidis. They were lined up, there was a shout of “Allah, curse your devil” and then they were shot. Other Yezidis living in the city started fleeing to the countryside, as an extremist Sunni group claimed responsibility. In all 24 Yezidi men were killed.

Three days later, I was printing out the first local reports of the massacre at a ramshackle business centre in Irbil when the manager approached me. “What do you know about it?” he said, anger breaking his habitual deference, as he dropped my print-outs on the desk. I asked him what he thought about the case. “Look what has happened now because of her,” he said, jabbing his finger at the headlines. “She was a very bad girl”.

شكلت المرأة على الدوام منذ أدام وحواء عنواناً مستمراً ومتجدداً لولادة الحياة على هذه الأرض. وهي التي اصطفاها الله لتكون أماً ليسوع المسيح رسول المحبة والسلام الذي قال: “من كان منكم بلا خطيئة فليرجمها بحجر” .

هي نفسها التي نعتبرها اليوم إنساناً قاصراً، فاقد الأهلية، بحاجة دائماً إلى وصي يدافع عنها، هي نفسها التي تتعرض اليوم أيضاً للذبح إن تزوجت بخلاف رغبة رجال قبيلتها، وهي التي تُسلط السيوف على عنقها إن هي تزوجت من غير ملتها، وويل لها إن أحبت،فالحب ممنوع عليها..!

ترى أية جريمة ارتكبتها تلك المرأة، حتى تعامل بتلك القسوة والوحشية؟ وأية قسوة أكبر من أن تسن القوانين التي تبيح قتل امرأة، وتعفي قاتلها من العقاب؟ ولماذا على المرأة دائماً أن تدمي إنسانيتها في كل لحظة من حياتها؟

أي مصير ينتظر هذا المجتمع الذي مازال يرزح تحت وطأة مفاهيم وعادات وقوانين تنتقص من كرامة المرأة، وتجعل سيف الرجل مسلطاً على عنقها متى شاء استله تحت ستار الشرف.!؟ وأي “شرف” هذا الذي يبيح قتل امرأة من قبل رجل، الذي لولا احتضانها له في رحمها تسعة أشهر لما خرج إلى الحياة.!؟

إن الشرف كلمة كبيرة واسعة بمعناها تختصر فيها كل معاني القيم الأخلاقية التي على المرء إن كان ذكراً أم أنثى أن يتحلى بها كالصدق والأمانة والاستقامة، والدفاع عن المرأة وليس الاعتداء عليها أو قتلها. فليس من الشرف بشيء أن نبيح للرجل قتل زوجته إن وجدها مع شخص أخر أو قتل أخته لمجرد أنها أحبت، أو أنها تزوجت من خارج عشيرتها أو طائفتها ونعفيه من العقاب، بينما نعاقب المرأة التي تقتل زوجها إن هي ضبطته مع امرأة غيرها..!

ونسأل هنا، أليس للمرأة شرف.؟ أم أنه ملكية أبدية للرجل الذي حولها إن كان أخاً أو أبا أو زوجاً أو ربما كان قريباً إلى ما بعد الدرجة الرابعة؟ وهل شرف المرأة يقتصر على جسدها، أو على حركة مثيرة أو مريبة منها أو لمجرد الشك في سلوكها.؟ وهل يملك ذلك الرجل الذي يسرق أو يرتشي أو يروج للمخدرات بين أبناء وطنه شرفاً عندما يستل سيفه ليقطع عنق امرأة تحت ستار الدفاع عن شرفه.!؟

إن المفهوم المتأصل في ثقافتنا ووعينا الجمعي بكل أسف مازال يؤكد أن المرأة في مجتمعاتنا العربية ما هي وسيلة تفريغ جنسي وإنجاب الأولاد، وهي المشتهاة دائماً، والعشيقة الخائنة. وتأتي التشريعات القانونية لتنتقص من حق المرأة أيضاً المنتهكة حقوقها أصلاً، وذلك في انحياز تطبيق تلك القوانين لصالح الرجل ضد المرأة كما في نص المادة 548 من قانون العقوبات السوري التي نصت : (1- يستفيد من العذر الحل من فاجأ زوجه أو أحد أصوله أو فروعه أو أخته في جرم الزنا المشهود أو في صلات جنسية فحشاء مع شخص آخر فأقدم على قتل أو إيذاء أحدهما بغير عمد.2- يستفيد مرتكب القتل أو الأذى من العذر المخفف إذا فاجأ زوجه أو أحد أصوله أو فرعه أو أخته في حالة مريبة مع آخر).ولابد أن نشير هنا إلى أن نص المادة المذكور مأخوذ عن التشريع الفرنسي، وقد جاء في الرأي الفقهي لشرح المادة المكورة الوارد في موسوعة قانون العقوبات السوري لمحمد أديب استانبولي الصفحة 348 ” إن كلمة الزوج هي ترجمة لكلمة conjoint الفرنسية والتي تقبل التأنيث والتذكير، وتطلق لغوياً على البعل وامرأته، ومن المحتمل أن تفاجأ الزوجة زوجها وهو في جرم الزنا المشهود، فنعتقد أنها لاتقل شعوراً بالسورة والغضب والغيرة والانفعال عن الزوج الذي يفاجأ بزوجته وهي في وضع مماثل، لذلك من العدل وكلمة حق تقال يجب أن يكون كلاهما على صعيد واحد من المساواة أمام القانون في هذا الصدد ). وندعو هنا إلغاء تلك المادة المعيبة فعلاً.

ونؤكد أخيراً أننا لسنا مع الفجور أو الابتذال الأخلاقي بالتأكيد، ولكننا مع حفظ الكرامة الإنسانية للرجل والمرأة معاً وصون شرفهما الإنساني في إطار من الاحترام المتبادل والعدالة الإنسانية دون تمييز أو تحييز على نحو ما جاء في الدستور والعهود والمواثيق الدولية وفي مقدمها الإعلان العالمي لحقوق الإنسان الذي احتفلنا في العاشر من هذا الشهر بمرور تسعة وخمسين عاماً على صدوره، والذى أكد في مادته الأولى : ( يولد جميع الناس أحراراً متساوين في الكرامة والحقوق، وقد وهبوا عقلاً وضميراً وعليهم أن يعامل بعضهم بعضاً بروح الإخاء)، والذي أكد أيضاً في مادته الثانية: ” لكل إنسان حق التمتع بكافة الحقوق والحريات الواردة في هذا الإعلان، دون أي تمييز، كالتمييز بسبب العنصر أو اللون أو الجنس أو اللغة أو الدين أو الرأي السياسي أو أي رأي آخر، أو الأصل الوطني أو الاجتماعي أو الثروة أو الميلاد أو أي وضع آخر، دون أية تفرقة بين الرجال والنساء

ميشال شماس

By Houzan Mahmoud

For decades women in Kurdistan have been subjected to all kinds of discrimination and suppression. Falling in love with the ‘wrong’ person can cost you your life. Sex outside marriage may bring a death sentence. The price of bringing ’shame’ upon family honour can be a woman’s life.

The breakdown of law and order in Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion has exacerbated the situation – earlier this month Youssif Mohammed Aziz, the regional minister for human rights in Kurdistan reported that at least 27 women had been murdered in the region over the last four months in ‘honour killings’.

There have been many cases of brutal killings, but this is only one side of the story. Many women and young girls have taken or attempted to take their own lives as a way of resisting the social control and subordinated role imposed upon them.

For example, Kurdistan’s Hawlati newspaper published a report carried out by a hospital in Sulaymania recording more than 7000 cases of women setting fire to themselves between 2000 and 2007.

Only after the stoning of a seventeen-year-old Yazidi girl, Dua Khalil Aswad, did the Kurdistan Regional Government issue a statement condemning so called ‘honour killings’ and violence against women. But soon after the statement was issued more than seventy women were killed for similar reasons and to this date none of the killers have been arrested.

Most Middle Eastern governments base policy and law upon a strict interpretation of Islamic teachings and codes of conduct. The notions of shame, honour, guilt and sin are then imposed on women through a conservative patriarchal culture. War, occupation, corrupt government and the existence and growth of Islamic and traditional conservative parties have all contributed to the formation of a hostile, anti-women environment in Iraq. Women are considered by many to be the possessions of men – it’s as if we only exist because men wish it so!

In a society where violence and sexual abuse towards women is a widespread cultural phenomenon it can be hard to see where any improvement in the conditions and rights of women can be made.

In the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq the systematic abuse and suppression of women is bad enough, but in the south the situation is much worse. Under the occupation women have been subjected to all kinds of attacks: beheadings, rape, abduction and trafficking. Political Islamists have formed various armed militias and groups that target women in particular. They do this to further their long term aim of a creating a conservative Islamic society in Iraq governed by their interpretation of the Shari’a, the Islamic law that already prevails in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In the last three months more than 40 women have been killed by the Islamists in Basra alone, murdered because of their ‘un-Islamic’ dress, according to Iraqi police. It is believed that many more deaths go unreported for fear of reprisals. In others cities where the Islamists have a stronger hold on power, the situation is even worse.

More violence and oppression against women unfolds with every new political twist and turn in the region. Our rights – the rights of women – have been taken away again and again. But there is a glimpse of hope in the form of courageous women taking up the fight and speaking out against male chauvinism, misogynistic Islamic ‘values’ and the traditional norms of society that relegate and subjugate women. The battle for equality dignity and liberty is well overdue. In the 21st Century no woman should be treated like an unchained slave – it’s time to turn this world upside down.

After hearing four hours of testimony, police and state prosecutors alike were in a highly emotional state: Two female members of the Abu-Ghanem family had broken their silence and testified in court against Kamal Rashad Abu-Ghanem, suspected of the murder of his 19-year-old sister, Hamda, in an “honor killing.” Another female member of the Arab Israeli clan was declared a hostile witness after she refused to answer the prosecution’s questions; a fourth is missing and feared dead.

Born into the Abu-Ghanem family from Ramle, numbering over 2,000 people, Hamda was the eighth female relative in six years who is believed to have been the victim of an “honor killing” – a murder carried out by a relative to compensate for loss of family status caused ostensibly by the victim’s actions. Hamda’s murder was preceded by that of seven others – Naifa, Susan, Zinat, Sabrin, Amira, Reem and Shirihan – all killed in similar circumstances. To date, only Reem’s murder has been solved. Police have not been able to make progress in their investigations because of lack of cooperation.

Hamda’s murder, however, seems to have spurred a real change within the family toward such killings: In its wake, female members have decided to speak out and openly cooperate with the police investigation.

Police questioned 20 witnesses concerning Hamda’s murder and were surprised by their cooperation. Four women, including the mother of the victim and of the alleged murderer, have been particularly important in the case. Three of them showed up at court yesterday to testify, but the fourth and most important, Y., who had been close to Hamda and gave incriminating evidence against the suspect, has mysteriously disappeared.

Keren Wexler, a lawyer on behalf of the state prosecution, told the court certain “unlawful measures” had prevented Y. from appearing; police said they were making efforts to locate her.

During her questioning, Y. had repeatedly told police that she feared for her life. “Leave me alone, I don’t want to be killed,” she said. “It’s my turn now … I don’t trust the police in Ramle or anyone … Why are all our girls being killed?”

A short time later, Y. returned home to Ramle and has not been seen since. Police suspect she may be being held against her will, and fear she may already have been murdered.

Despite the risks, Hamda’s mother took the stand to testify against her own son.

“I’m not scared of him,” she told the judge. “I told the judges that he is dead to me. I did so much for him, gave him so much, as I did for Hamda as well. Who killed this charming girl, the neighbors? It was him! He told me once, ‘There will come a day when Hamda will die.’ And I told him that when that day comes, he can forget he ever had a mother.”

On the reasons that spurred her to leave Ramle, the witness said she “has no faith in anyone. Everyone’s hanging around my house carrying weapons and guns. I know I’m in their sights. I’m scared they’ll ambush me.”

The last of the three women to take the stand, S., was emotional during her testimony. When she left the court she seemed to be empowered, full of adrenalin and courage. She even mustered the strength to smile at relatives who stood by the hall’s entrance.

Two of the women who gave testimony told the judges that they believe the suspect killed Hamda. The third appeared in court, but was declared a hostile witness after she refused to answer the prosecution’s questions. She seemed shaken and claimed not to recognize anyone – even her own father.

Hamda’s bullet-riddled body was found lying on her bed in her parents’ house last January. She had taken refuge in a women’s shelter for a long time because she suspected that her brother would try to harm her. According to eye-witnesses, the defendant was seen entering his parents’ house, accompanied by a number of men, shortly before Hamda was killed. No one witnessed the murder, but the suspect was seen fleeing the scene immediately after shots were heard. Traces of gunpowder were found on his clothes.

“There’s a body of evidence that leads to the conclusion that the suspect murdered his sister,” the prosecution said.

During the women’s testimony at court yesterday, male members of the Abu-Ghanem clan waited outside. They said they were surprised to have been removed from court. “What does the prosecutor think? That they’re scared of us?” one of them said. “Until recently, [Hamda's] mother lived only three meters away. We know where the rest live and nothing has happened to them. We too have sisters and educated women, and no one is killing them. This is all a police fabrication: Rashad is innocent.”