New Delhi, May 30 (IANS) Terming the killing of Nitish Katara an “honour killing”, a city court Friday sentenced to life imprisonment guilty cousins Vikas and Vishal Yadav in the 2002 murder. Additional Sessions Judge Ravinder Kaur rejected the prosecution’s contention of awarding death penalty to the Yadavs while awarding them life. The court also imposed a fine of Rs.160,000 each.“I am of the view that the case did not fall under the ‘rarest of rare’ category. The post-mortem report speaks of only single injury on the skull of the deceased, which is proved to have been caused by a hammer, which in my opinion cannot be termed as brutal,” Kaur said.

“I cannot lose sight of the fact that there were three accused persons, but only one injury is found on the body of the deceased, which was the cause of his death, which in my opinion is a great mitigating circumstance in favour of the convicts,” the judge said in her order that ran into approximately 1,100 pages.

Giving her views on the nature of crime, Kaur ruled: “The Nitish Katara murder was an honour killing by the accused persons as they did not like their sister having an affair with a boy of a different caste and they could never accept her plans to marry him.”

She further said: “In my opinion it is not the death penalty which is deterred in which a person is hanged to death in a few seconds, on the contrary it is the life imprisonment which is deterred wherein the convict dies every moment in the jail.”

After the sentence was passed, Nitish Katara’s mother Neelam, who has fought for the past six years to get the two convicted, said: “I respect the decision of the court.”

The court had on Wednesday held influential Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav’s son Vikas Yadav and nephew Vishal Yadav guilty for the murder of Nitish Katara.

The court had found them guilty of murder, kidnapping and destruction of evidence.

The prosecution held that the cousins had killed Nitish, son of an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, on the night of Feb 16-17, 2002, as they did not approve his close ties with Vikas’ sister Bharti.

Nitish was kidnapped and murdered after he attended a wedding in Ghaziabad that night. His body was found in a village in Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh.

Remarking that Bharti’s deposition in the court was crucial, the judge observed: “I feel her conduct… did not (do) justice to the soul of the deceased without whom she had claimed she could not survive.”

Bharti, now based in Britain, had avoided court summons apparently under family pressure, before deposing before it.

She tried to make a “balanced statement” in the court as she had already lost Nitish and did not want to lose her brother, the judge noted.

“From the conduct of the accused persons, the inference can be drawn that they were aware of the relationship between the two and Vikas did not appear in the court on both days when Bharti was examined though he was present in the lock-up.

“This shows that he had the knowledge of the relationship between the two and had no courage to face Bharti,” the judge said.

The verdict came as relief for the victim’s mother who had fought for justice against the powerful Yadav family.

“I thank god and the media for helping me out in this long battle. This is a landmark judgement and my belief in the judicial system has increased,” Nitish’s mother Neelam Katara told IANS.

D.P. Yadav, an Uttar Pradesh legislator and former Rajya Sabha member, said: “Injustice has been done to my innocent kids. Some rich, powerful people and bureaucrats have done this.”

Special Public Prosecutor B.S. Joon said: “We are happy”.

Flaying the “negative role” played by the media, defence counsel G.K. Bharti said they would appeal in the higher court.

“The media has played a negative role against us but we will approach the Delhi High Court for justice. The court does not work on emotions and getting a life imprisonment is not an achievement for us,” the counsel for Vikas told reporters minutes after the verdict.

The Indian News 

An Egyptian farmer who suspected his 16-year-old daughter was having an affair hanged her and then beheaded her body in the southern province of Bani Soueif, it was reported Sunday.

The local daily Al-Akhbar said Abdel-Samad, 46, turned himself to the police after the killing. It said a police investigation showed the father suspected his daughter of having the affair.

So-called honour killings are not unusual in Egypt and other countries of the Middle East, where families murder female members for having brought ’shame’ on their name.

Such killings often involve a female member refusing an arranged marriage or having a relationship that the family considers to be inappropriate.

A man identified as Ahmad (53) killed his 17 years old daughter, identified as Farzaneh, on May 7, in the central city Isfahan, reported several Iranian newspapers.Farzaneh was kidnapped earlier and was held captive by her brother-in-law, for ten days, the father told reporters.  In order to save the family’s honor, he then decided to take her life.

“After talking to Farzaneh, she said that she would rather die,” Said Ahmad.

The 53 years old man told a more detailed version of the story to the reporters later.

“Seven months ago, Saeed married my older daughter. After a while he started showing lack of interest towards her. He instead wanted to marry my younger daughter Farzaneh. I didn’t accept that. After divorcing my older daughter Saeed continued showing interest for Farzaneh. Finally he kidnapped her and stayed with her for 10 days. We tried to solve the problem without involving the authorities, but had to contact the police who arrested Saeed and Farzaneh. On Tuesday (May 6.) we brought Farzaneh home from custody. First I beat her up. She just cried and apologized for what had happened. I felt pity for her but couldn’t free myself from anxiety of losing my honor. Tuesday night I sat by Farzaneh and told her that one of us had to die to save the families honor. She kissed my forehead and said if someone had to die it must be her. On my request, that night Farzaneh slept in a room downstairs. I had decided to put an end to her life. Everyone in the family knew what was going to happen. During the night I sat several times by her bed and looked at her innocent face. At the time of morning prayer I woke her and her sister up. We talked for the last time and I repeated to her that one of us could live. She laid down and volunteered to die. She kissed my face for the last time and I said good bye to her. I put her hands into her sister’s hands and put a plastic bag on her face. She didn’t show any resistance. We had decided to show it as a suicide. But later we contacted the police and told them the story.”

Article 220 of the Iranian Criminal Code states: “If a father –or his male ancestors– kill their children, they will not be prosecuted for murder.”  Likewise, article 1179 of the Civil Code states, “Parents have the right to punish their children within the limits prescribed by law.”

On another incident, a father buried his daughter alive after beating her up because she was addicted to drugs, reported the Iranian state-run daily, Fars, on May 6. The girl was saved by the people passing by and transferred to the hospital.

Stop Fundamentalism 

Shock and disbelief has gripped the doctors’ community in the Capital. And the question that is on everyone’s mind, irrespective of his or her personal acquaintance with the Talwars, is — “Why did Dr Rajesh Talwar murder his own daughter — if he has actually done so?”

Meanwhile, psychiatrists and psychologists are saying that there is a lot more than what the police have to say in this case. If going by the police version — that Aarushi was found in “an objectionable position” with the servant — the father’s first reaction would have been either to slap the daughter or beat up the servant and not drug them before slitting their throats in separate areas in the house, say experts. The doctors are saying that from what the police have shown it seems the murder was premeditated.

“From what we have gathered from the police and post mortem reports, it is unclear whether the crime was actually a spontaneous reaction to what the doctor saw in Aarushi’s bedroom. There is a lot more hidden in this case,” says Dr Sandeep Vohra, consultant psychiatrist at Apollo hospital.

“One resorts to such extreme measures — where a father kills his child — only when there is a perceived threat to his reputation. In keeping the survival instinct in mind, this can be the only plausible explanation,” he adds.

“It may be premature to jump the gun and declare the father as the culprit especially as the validity of the claims made by the police are still to be established,” says Dr Rajesh Sagar, associate professor at the Department of Psychiatry at AIIMS.

“But taking the larger Indian picture — where there is a history of female foeticide and honour killings in the garb of religion and caste — one can’t say that such brutal murders don’t happen. But yet again, the motive for the killing has to be established before one really takes the case forward,” he adds.

Some doctors, however, are upset about the hype. “It will only play havoc on the mind of the less literate. The one question they will have is — if the wealthy and the educated can kill, so can we,” said a doctor from a government hospital, unwilling to be named.

Hindustan Times

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called “honour” killings and female suicides on the increase.

“At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone,” a doctor told AFP in the region’s second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.

“Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances” — apparently the victims of “honour” killings.

“Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves,” the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

According to Kurdish regional government figures, in Sulaimaniyah province alone more than 50 women attempted suicide by burning in the first four months of the year and another eight tried to hang themselves.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq has regularly highlighted “honour” killings of Kurdish women as being among the country’s most severe human rights abuses.

Most such crimes are reported as deaths caused by accidental fires in the home.

Aso Kamal, a 42-year-old British Kurdish Iraqi campaigner, says that between 1991 and 2007, 12,500 women were murdered for “honour” reasons or committed suicide in the country’s three Kurdish provinces.

The Kurdish autonomous region runs its own affairs and has enjoyed relative peace and growing prosperity since the US-led invasion of 2003, while Arab areas of Iraq have been plunged into sectarian warfare.

But crimes against women continue despite campaigns by human rights activists and repeated condemnation by women members of the regional government and parliament.

Most of the attacks are carried out by close relatives who believe the victims’ behaviour to have been immoral. Desperate to escape the cycle of domestic violence, many women turn to suicide.

The Kurdish region’s first centre dedicated to tackling domestic violence against women opened in Sulaimaniyah last October, and provides psychological support and legal advice to victims in complete confidentiality.

“Even if the phenomenon is deeply embedded in the historical roots of our region, it has become alarmingly commonplace in recent months,” Layla Abdullah, president of the separate Kurdish women’s rights group the Aram Shelter, said.

“In 2004, 48 female victims of domestic violence found refuge at the association in order to escape death,” Abdullah said.

“The number rose to 71 in 2007, and now it stands at 25 for the first four months of this year,” she added.

In 2002 the Kurdish government abolished a law which reduced the penalties for those convicted of “honour” crimes, but this has still not eradicated the violence, according to those fighting to protect Kurdish women’s rights.

In November 2007, Kurdish human rights minister Aziz Mohammed acknowledged that domestic violence occurred in northern Iraq.

“Domestic violence, sexual abuse, death threats, insults, forced marriages, kidnapping, being forced to leave school… these are the problems which confront the women of Kurdistan,” a ministry report said, adding that most victims were between 13 and 18 years old.

Paradoxically, Kurdish women are deeply involved in the region’s political process with 28 in the 111-seat parliament and three holding ministerial positions.

“Suicide attempts by traumatised women are on the increase,” said Bakhshan Zangana, who heads the parliamentary women’s group.

“We must discuss and find a solution to this situation. Suicide is clearly one of the consequences of domestic violence and cruelty.”

AFP

Morsal O. was 16, a young girl with joie de vivre. She laughed a lot and she was a go-getter. She was a good student, had ambition and a lot ahead of her in life. But she was murdered on Friday, May 9. Her 23-year-old brother Ahmad, with the help of a cousin, lured her to a parking lot near a subway station in the German port city of Hamburg under a false pretense and stabbed her 20 times with a knife.If Morsal had known she would be coming face to face with her brother, she probably wouldn’t have gone that evening. The two hadn’t been on talking terms for quite some time, and Ahmed had threatened his sister repeatedly. Just before her murder, Morsal had sought refuge from her family, who moved to Germany from Afghanistan 13 years ago, at a number of city social facilities, most recently living for more than a year in a youth safe house. But she never succeeded in entirely breaking off contact with her family.

For more than an hour, emergency doctors fought to save Morsal’s life, but she died on the way to the hospital. The girl’s parents rushed to the scene, but they weren’t allowed to attend to their daughter because they had forgotten their IDs in the midst of the turmoil.

Morsal died alone.

Killer: “My Sisters Are My Life”

“Maybe he did it out of love,” Moral’s cousin Mujda said, when asked why Ahmad stabbed his sister that night. Mudja O. gave an extensive interview to SPIEGEL TV following the crime, discussing the stabbing and her cousin’s possible motives for the killing. “We spoke to him and he told us, ‘My sisters are my life. She should be put away before anything happens to her. The last sentence that we heard from him was that he loved his sister.”

It was not the first time Ahmad, who worked in an auto parts store, had come to the attention of the police for violent acts, either. In police circles, he was known as a serial offender, constantly in trouble for beatings and even stabbings. Morsal had even tried to get charges pressed against her brother with the police after he repeatedly attacked her, but she later withdrew them.

In the SPIEGEL TV interview, her cousin says that Morsal “simply wanted more freedom.” She wanted to lead her own life and not the one her parents had planned for her. “She was actually given a lot of freedom, in my opinion. She had some piercings, for example. Her parents didn’t say anything about it. She could wear what she wanted — even if she wasn’t allowed to wear a miniskirt to school.”

Morsal had tried to test her limits — they were sometimes very narrow at home. For Morsal they were too narrow even if the 16-year-old dressed like a Western girl, with tight jeans and colorful shirts.

There were constant fights because she wore too much makeup, or didn’t come home when she was told to, because she locked herself in her room, didn’t do enough homework or had the wrong friends. Ahmad thought it was his duty to take care of his sister. He observed what she was doing closely. He was worried, his cousin says. If he couldn’t keep an eye on her, he had some other member of the extended family do it for him. Cousins, second cousins, uncles and aunts, the network of relations was tightknit — and big.

Morsal tried to protect herself from these restrictions, her cousin recalls. She managed to almost completely avoid Ahmad and she no longer spoke with him. “He tried again and again and he failed. At some stage the parents stepped in and said, ‘That’s enough, this is our daughter.”

The trouble never let up, though, and Morsal eventually moved into a youth safe house. Her lifestyle, her concept of freedom and self expression didn’t chime with her family’s. Tradition was very important to Ahmad, and he didn’t want Morsal to be out and about at all hours of the day. “He was worried when he didn’t know where his sister was. He didn’t want to get a call at 1 a.m and be told his sister was lying beaten up on the street. He was expecting something like that,” his cousin says, attempting to explain something she herself cannot really understand.

Ahmad’s Mother: “I Hate Him”

According a United Nations report, around 5,000 women fall victim to “honor killings” around the world each year. The true figure, however, is most likely much higher. Between January 1996 and July 2005, 55 honor killings were reported to the police in Germany alone. Yet it is difficult to record the crime because there is no official police definition.

“We have to stop talking about ’so-called honor killings,’” lawyer and women’s rights activist Seyran Ates told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “There is no such thing. These are not ’so-called’ honor killings, but plain and simple honor killings. This term honor is based on a woman not being allowed to express her own sexuality. It means: no premarital sex, no boyfriend. If a girl or young woman doesn’t stick to this then she is seen as a scourge — someone who must be killed to in order to restore honor.”

Honor can be washed clean with the blood of the “guilty one,” she explains. “The term ‘honor,’ that honor killings are based upon, has nothing at all to do with the Western understanding of the word,” says Ates. “And it can only be overcome by publicly rejecting it. Children have to be taught in school that this term is dehumanizing. We have to take a stand within society. We have to make it very clear: ‘If you think like this, then you are living in the wrong century. You are breaking the rules of the constitutional state in which you live, and you are not respecting human or women’s rights.’”

Ahmad’s parents have already distanced themselves from their son. In an interview with German public broadcaster NDR, his father said: “My son is a criminal,” and his mother said “I hate him.” The police are investigating how much Ahmad’s family might have known about his murderous plan, but they haven’t found any incriminating evidence so far.

But Ates says that those who carry out honor killings should also be considered victims. “The men are one part of a system,” she says. “A 23-year-old man is driven to brutally stab his sister to death. But he was not born a murder. We have to reflect on what pushed him so far.”

This perverted understanding of honor needs to be dealt with critically while these men are still in school, and awareness of the issue has to be raised within the legal profession, where many of these cases are handled, she argues. In particular, work needs to be done to raise awareness among families. “It needs to be communicated to families that their daughter is not a whore if she goes out in the evening. We have to tell families: ‘Whatever your daughter does, whether she takes drugs, or has a boyfriend, or gets involved in crime — no one has the right to kill her.’”

If a girl turns away from her family, then it is vitally important that she is given protection and that someone accompanies her if she contacts her family. In Berlin the Papatya Project helps girls who are being hunted by their families. Papatya has no official address and cannot be directly contacted by telephone — in order to protect the young women. Contact is established through aid organizations and youth welfare services. People who work with the girls say that they are rarely aware of the danger their relatives can pose and often meet with their fathers, brothers or cousins. “We advise the girls not to leave the house during the first few days. We have a lot of girls who are in danger, and who don’t go outside for weeks at a time,” one of the project staff told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

“What Pushed Him so Far?”

Nevertheless, many young women, including Morsal, repeatedly reestablish contact with their families, despite warnings that they shouldn’t. “They hope that their families will at some point accept their lifestyle,” said the Papatya counseler. “But no one can force force them to go somewhere they don’t want to go or to leave the city. I can also understand these girls though because they are often very young and wouldn’t want to just give everything up from one day to the next, either.”

“They still want to be a part of things,” says lawyer Ates. “Many have a very positive sense of the family which they have grown up with. At home they seek security and love. But reconciling a Western lifestyle with closeness to the family is a huge feat to accomplish.” Morsal also knew that she was in danger — and she met with her brother and cousin anyway.

“I’ve been spending all of my time trying to imagine what was going through Ahmad’s mind,” Morsal’s cousin told SPIEGEL TV. “I don’t think much of him any more. And I very much hope that he will be given a just punishment. No matter what she did, Morsal didn’t deserve this.”

Spiegel 

The local advisory committee formed to continue running the anti-honour killing campaign, launched by the British Council in November 2004, has lost interest in the project since the UK government stopped funding when the project ended in March 2007, it has been learnt. The three-year awareness project was part of an international campaign to remove the menace imbibed not only in Pakistani society but in several other countries including Egypt and Israel.

After a series of training sessions involving members from various strata of society, including the judiciary, police, NGOs, academia and the media during the programme, an Advisory Committee of the Honour Killing Awareness Raising Project was set up to run the campaign in rural Sindh and Southern Punjab — where a majority of the cases are reported every year. However, it has been learnt, through reliable sources, that the campaign proved to be unsuccessful after most members of the advisory committee backed out and major reshuffling took place in the Sindh Police Department.

The project ran successfully for three years and the training and workshop sessions were completed in the designated time (March 2007), following which an advisory committee was formed that was expected to carry on the campaign further, but the British Council has received no update so far. On contacting the Social Campaign Manager, Asghar Soomro, for details of the three-year project, he informed that the project had to meet five targets, including a print and electronic media campaign through screening of documentaries on honour killings, training of journalists from across Sindh and Southern Punjab, awareness raising campaigns in schools, national and international conferences on honour killing and the training of the police.

He said that the focus of the training was to sensitise the police because a victim first seeks their help for justice. “Since there is no forensic laboratory with the Sindh Police Department, they rely on ocular evidence and stress on confession, rather than conviction. The project attempted to change this attitude as well and senior police officers from London were invited for the training,” he added. However, despite the training, no behavioral change was noted.

On being questioned if the awareness-raising project yielded some positive results between November 2004 and March 2007, Soomro said that the number of cases of Karo Kari reported increased from 100 in 2004 to 300 in 2005 — which was proof of the increasing awareness about recognising the act and reporting it as a crime.

During a seminar held on the issue in 2006, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad also termed the project a ‘great step’ and attached his hopes with members of the committee and the campaign, believing that the effort “will make a difference” and would prove to be successful as “mutual solutions would be found in an amicable manner”. However, the opposite has been the case as honour killings continue to be reported in Sindh.

Under the leadership of Dr Hameeda Khuhro and Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid, the members of the committee comprised Nayyar H. Haider, the then Additional IG, Investigation, Sindh Police, Superintendent Police Sharjeel Kharal, Sheema Kirmani of Tehrik-i-Niswan, Advocate Zia Awan and members of NGOs, Human Rights Education Forum, Dastak Communications among others.

The members had the support of Hamish Daniel, British Deputy High Commissioner, Marcus Gilbert and Samina Khan of the British Council who later left their office and the other members split as well. The News contacted Justice (retd) Zahid for further details on the status of the project, but he expressed his ignorance over the issue.

Some insiders told The News that the lack of interest in the project is perhaps due to the lack of funds for the campaign and that the members were perhaps more interested in the money than the issue. No coordination among the above-mentioned NGOs is seen either to curb the menace.

The News International 

New Delhi, May 19 (IANS) A man has been arrested for allegedly murdering his sister-in-law and her lover, both from the same caste, as he was opposed to their affair, police said Monday. Sanjay was arrested from Uttar Pradesh Sunday for murdering Rajkumar, 22, and Geeta, 20, both residents of Bagpat in Uttar Pradesh.They were killed in Dwarka Vihar area of Najafgarh in southwest Delhi May 10.

Police said investigations were taken up after the bodies were recovered from near a drain Tuesday. Rajkumar’s body was stuffed in a gunny bag, while Geeta’s body was covered with another gunny bag.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest Delhi) Shalini Singh said a love letter and some telephone numbers were found from the bodies.

“During investigations, the victims’ identities were ascertained and we learnt that they had eloped three months ago to get married against the wishes of their families,” she said.

“Geeta’s relatives were infuriated and were looking for them. They somehow apprehended them in Meerut and brought them to the home of Geeta’s brother-in-law in Dwarka Vihar. Sanjay along with Geeta’s uncle Devender tortured them and asked them not to go ahead with the marriage, but both refused,” she added.

The official said Sanjay and Devender killed them and threw their bodies near the Najafgarh drain.

Police said search was on to nab Devender.

The Indian

A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman’s shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building.

Ronak was wounded by bullets in the neck, side and leg and only survived after a four-hour operation. She was the latest victim of a huge increase across Iraq in the number of “honour” killings of women for alleged immorality by their own families.

Many are burnt to death by having petrol or paraffin poured over them and set ablaze. Others are shot or strangled. The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone.

The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.

The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.

Since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of women suffering violence – it is almost always the women rather than the men who suffer retribution – as a result of some aspect of their love life being pictured on mobile phones.

In 2007, at least 350 women, double the figure for the previous year, suffered violence as a result of mobile phone “evidence”, according to Amanj Khalil of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing figures compiled by women’s organisations and the police directorate in Sulaymaniyah.

The true figure is probably much higher. Bodies are buried in the mountains. Violence is concealed. Whole extended families and clans feel a genuine sense of shame because of some supposed act of immorality.

Often retribution is carefully planned. In the case of Ronak, whose real name has to be concealed, her would-be killer carefully chose his firing point in an empty office building beside the shelter and may have waited for her for a long time. Ronak, who has three children, came from the ramshackle town of Chamchamal on the road between Sulaymaniyah and Kirkuk. Accused of adultery by her husband and fearing an honour killing, she fled her house and took refuge first with the police who passed her on in March this year to the Asuda shelter in Sulaymaniyah, one of six shelters in Kurdistan for women who are victims of violence or threatened with honour killing.

She must have thought herself safe. Along with four other women, she was living on the first floor which can only be reached by a narrow staircase closed off by a locked inner door. The police gave a measure of protection. But members of her husband’s family may have pursued her from Chamchamal. “When we went to court [with Ronak, who was seeking a divorce] we thought we were being followed,” says Khanum Raheem Lateef, the manager of Asuda.

The windows in the shelter are mostly masked by curtains, but the one in the kitchen area leading to the bathroom had been taken down. At 11pm last Sunday Ronak went to the bathroom and as she came back into the kitchen a gunman lying on a roof 20ft away shot her three times.

The position of women in Iraqi society has deteriorated dramatically since the start of the occupation. Despite the horrific number of honour killings, their status may be improving only in Kurdistan, where the government is secular, in contrast to Baghdad where the religious parties hold power. The Kurdish police and courts are also more sympathetic than elsewhere in Iraq to women whose lives have been threatened. There are no shelters for women in Baghdad or Basra.

Vulnerability to violence is not the only area in which the equal status of women in Iraq has been eroded. A woman can only get a new passport if she is accompanied by a male relative. One woman, whose father was too ill to attend the passport office, had to take her 14-year-old brother with her to vouch for her before officials would give her a new passport.

Many women escape from miserable marriages, often arranged by their families, not by flight but by suicide. In 2007, some 600 women and girls in Kurdistan killed themselves, mostly by burning themselves, or by drowning or shooting themselves, according to the Health Ministry of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

“Women may feel there is genuinely no hope for them to escape subjection,” says Sherizaan Minwalla, a lawyer with the Heartland Alliance in Sulaymaniyah, who represents many victims of domestic violence. “Suicide may seem a rational choice and even a form of protest.”

The Independent 

German police are seeking the brother of a 16-year-old Hamburg girl of Afghan descent who died early on Friday morning of multiple stab wounds.

Neighbours and a passing group of youths in Hamburg’s Sankt Georg district heard the girl screaming near the Berliner Tor metro stop and called police at 11:21 pm on Thursday.

The girl died about an hour later despite the efforts of emergency medical personnel to revive her, Hamburg police spokesman Andreas Schöpflin told The Local. Witnesses did not see anyone running away, he said.

Police have not ruled out the possibility that the stabbing could have been an honour killing, Schöpflin said. Homicide investigators and the district attorney’s office in Hamburg are seeking the girl’s 23-year-old brother.

“I cannot exclude the possibility of an honour killing, but I cannot confirm it either,” Schöpflin said.

Both siblings are German citizens who immigrated from Afghanistan. Schöpflin could not say how long they had been in the country.

Schöpflin also declined to confirm a report from German newspaper Bild on Friday that the girl had been stabbed 20 times.

A crisis intervention team is caring for the girl’s family.

A series of six honour killings in Berlin – including the shooting at a bus stop of 23-year-old Turkish woman Hatun Sürücü – shook Germany in 2005. Sürücü’s youngest brother, Ayhan Sürücü, later confessed to killing her because he did not approve of her Western lifestyle.

The Local