A Jordanian court has convicted a Syrian man of strangling his sister and sentenced him to 7 1/2 years in jail.

The court said Wednesday that the man had killed his sister because he believed her behavior to be “shameful” and harmed family honor. He claimed she was working in night clubs.

The man traveled to Jordan to carry out the murder and then dumped her body in a deserted area, before fleeing to Libya, according to the indictment sheet. He was later extradited to Jordan to stand trial.

About 20 women are killed each year in Jordan by male relatives in so-called “honor killings”.

AP

Written by: Mr. Imran Mazher (Rays of Development Organization)
GUJRANWALA, Pakistan: A housewife and her four children were shot dead by her husband in village Bhoma Bath here on Monday.
According to details, the murderer Zulfiqar, the husband of Shahida and father of four children including  three sons Usman, Sufian and  Hamza, one daughter Aden Bibi, wanted to contract a second marriage but his wife was no agree with his  the idea.
A few days ago, accused Zulfiqar tried to kill his wife by electrocution. As things worsened, he planed to kill even the children.
On the day of unpleasant incident, he administered some intoxicant to wife and children and then shot them all dead from close range.
Alipur police station has registered a case; police have arrested the accused and are investigating.

Source:
Ferhan Mazher,
Chairman (Rays of Development Organization, Sargodha, Pakistan)

Selma Atabek, a women’s rights activist, has said violence against women is the most important problem in Turkey and that it affects women from all walks of life.

“In the past, we thought that it happens only to women in lower socioeconomic strata. But this is not the case. Women from all walks of life face violence,” she said.

Many studies show that nearly one in two women suffer violence at least once in their lifetime. A recent study has shown that 42 percent of Turkish women have been victims of physical or sexual violence by a male relative or spouse at least once in their lives. The figures are the result of the yearlong National Research Project on Domestic Violence Against Women in Turkey, funded by the European Union.

The results are not encouraging in European countries, either. In the United Kingdom, one woman dies every three days as a result of domestic violence. In the Netherlands, one-fifth of all women have been subjected to violence by a partner or ex-partner.

In an interview with Monday Talk, Atabek elaborated on the issue and told us about the development of the women’s movement in Turkey, with anecdotes from her own personal experience. We spoke at the Women’s Library and Information Center Foundation, which was founded in celebration of March 8, International Women’s Day, in 1990.

You have been part of the women’s movement in Turkey since the mid-1970s. How do you think the movement has evolved since then?

Before 1980, the women’s movement was mostly political. We were working in the women’s branches within political movements. After the chaotic years of the ‘70s, we sat down and started to think about what we were doing and why we were doing it. In the ‘80s, the women’s movement woke up to new developments.

What were these new developments?

We started to learn about feminism. In political movements, we had little knowledge about feminism. Following the 1980 military coup, politics entered a time of stalemate, but the women’s movement was active. We started to meet active people — such as Şirin Tekeli, who was a pioneering academic — in the area of feminism. And we found that women’s problems were subject matter apart from the class struggle. Before we had a formula and it was: Like all other problems, women’s problems will disappear when the class struggle sees success. In the late ‘80s, activist women were involved in women’s rights campaigns that were frequent and put women’s issues in the spotlight.

What kind of campaigns were they?

We carried out protests against violence against women. We questioned everything then.

Such as?

With the largely informal and heterogeneous feminist movement, we questioned the role of family, for example. The expectation that women had to be chaste and modest began to be challenged. We protested domestic violence with the participation of many women. We started the first “Purple Needle” campaign, in which needles with purple heads were distributed on the streets against sexual harassment. We even questioned our marriages. We realized that we had restricted ourselves and had a conservative way of life. We discovered our right to be on the streets, not just during the day, but also at night.

Are you married?

I’ve been married for 30 years. Some of us had our husbands involved in the process and evolved together. My husband has been in the process with me. We learned things together. We were active in organizing protests and campaigns, plus educational activities involving men.

Could you tell us about a campaign that was personally important for you?

Yes! I was involved in a mass divorce protest in which I got a divorce to oppose the difficult process of getting a divorce. It was not easy to get a divorce for women then. We wanted to send the message that we do not get permission from the state when we make the decision to get married and we won’t when we want to get a divorce. There was a period when some government officials were opposed to the liberal women’s movement. For example, one of them, Cemil Çicek, had said that flirting is no different than adultery. A ministry was established related to women and family issues, and they had statistics trying to link the rise of divorce in the society to women’s work outside of the home. We protested all of these unfounded ideas.

Was that period a golden age for the women’s movement?

It was. For me, it was a personal renaissance. We had great spirit. We had great enthusiasm. We worked with women on the ground. We protested many discriminatory acts and laws against women in Turkey. Now there are more projects and academic research regarding the issue. We also worked on drafting laws to change the secondary status of women in the family. We were able have Parliament pass a law on the equal distribution of property between husband and wife but we had an unexpected result at the last minute.

Would you tell us more about that?

The law passed but with a big flaw. Marriages done before the law went into effect were excluded from benefiting from the change. It was a last minute adjustment by the lawmakers and we had never thought about it since it was clear to us that a lot of marriages were making women slaves in the family because of their economic dependency.

What is the most persistent problem facing women in Turkey?

The most important problem relates to the safety of women. It is violence against women and honor crimes. We talk about religious revivalism in Turkey, and I wonder where it is, because religion is about making people’s lives better. Imams should tell the masses in mosques tens, hundreds and thousands of times that it is a cruel crime to kill women in the name of honor. The head of the Religious Affairs Directorate should talk about this on television every day. If not, I question the earnestness of this religiosity.

Speaking of religion, there seems to be a communication gap between religious women’s rights defenders, particularly the women who wear the headscarf, and feminists. Do you agree?

Yes, there is a communication gap, because feminists are pro-freedom and wearing a headscarf brings many restrictions for women.

Don’t you think that the feminist movement can work with religious women’s rights defenders toward removing some of those restrictions, such as access to higher education?

I’ve always defended removing restrictions in that regard. There should not have been a higher education ban on women who wear headscarves. This is outright discrimination against women. Men, who might have even more fanatic religious views but do not display it, can have access to all kinds of education. And the issue has grown to be political because of the ban on the headscarf at universities, and the headscarf has become a political symbol as a result.

Could the feminist movement emphasize, together with headscarved women, the fact that the style of one’s clothes is not the sole thing people should pay attention to in public life?

Feminists never excluded headscarved activist women.

Have they been included?

They are inspired by feminism and talk about, for example, why their prayer areas are secondary to the men’s areas in mosques. They are the only ones who can engage in those kinds of discussions and take a stance. It is distant subject matter to me.

Don’t you think the “other side” would think of the same thing for some of the feminist causes and not sympathize with them?

I look back and think that as feminists, a religiously conservative lifestyle was something that we were not sympathizing with at all. Now religious conservatism is on the rise and their voices are heard. There are sways and swings in the society. There will be balance in the end. People eventually will meet in the middle and find consensus.

Are you hopeful about the future?

Sometimes I feel dismay, sometimes hope. I am coming from a generation that sacrificed its personal interests and desires for ideals that we thought would make Turkey a better place to live. Because of that, I wish future generations would not have to go through a similar experience. And I see indications in that regard. For example, I see children from the less developed eastern and southeastern parts of Turkey and they are from low-income families. They speak on television expressing their views on issues and talk about their future plans when asked by reporters. They have self-confidence. Their families treat them better than in the past. They have more freedom. That gives me hope.

You mentioned that you have taken many field trips in Anatolia. Do you have any memorable stories from those trips?

I was so disturbed on some of our field trips because we were not able to communicate with women, since we did not know Kurdish and they did not know Turkish. Nobody was able to reach them at the time through television or radio. Why shouldn’t there be one channel that these women would be able to understand? I was so dismayed then. But, in general, I always came back to İstanbul with hope, because if you do make the effort to touch the lives of those people positively, they are always receptive.

You rate violence against women as the most important problem in Turkey. Does it happen only to women from lower socioeconomic levels?

Not at all. In the past we thought so. But it is not the case. Women from all walks of life face violence. I personally know people from my own social network with such experiences.

What would you say are the other most important problems facing women in Turkey?

Economic dependency and not having access to education. Over the years, I have realized that women have superior qualities. Women do not have a pro-status quo approach like men. Look at the crowds who immigrated to the city from villages. You see men spitting on the streets, but not women. Women’s adaptation to their environment is much better than men. If women are given a chance, they would make the world a better place to live. At least, we would not have those dreadful cockfights in the world!

Today’s Zaman

A 21-year-old girl was allegedly stabbed to death by her father for marrying against her family’s wishes. The incident happened in Gajnur Taluk of Shimoga district.

The victim, Bhavya, married Somashekar, who she met while working in a garment factory in Bangalore. Perumal, her father, was against their marriage.

Bhavya, however, went against her father’s wish and married Somashekar. The couple moved to Bangalore nine months ago. On Wednesday, Bhavya and Somashekhar reached Shimoga to attend a function.

When Perumal came to know about it, he confronted them. In the ensuing melee, he stabbed Bhavya to death. She was four months pregnant.

Topnews.in

A Jordanian teenager was charged with premeditated murder for strangling his sister after her husband divorced her over an alleged affair, a judicial official said on Friday.

The 16-year-old turned himself in to police and confessed on Thursday to strangling his 30-year-old sister with a wire from a mobile phone charger in Ajlun, north of the capital Amman, according to the official.

“The family of the woman found her in the woods with another man two days before the crime, and after her husband had divorced her because he had accused her of having a lover,” he said.

“The suspect got enraged and killed his sister immediately before handing himself in to police, claiming he wanted to cleanse the honour of his family.”

According to the judicial official “the suspect is likely to receive a reduced sentence after his father dropped charges against him and because he is under 18.”

Murder is punishable by death under Jordanian law, but in the case of “honour killings,” a court usually commutes or reduces sentences if the family of a victim drops charges against the killers.

Between 15 and 20 women are murdered every year to “cleanse the family’s honour.” Last year around 17 such killings were recorded.

Perpetrators often get relatively light sentences as MPs have refused to reform the penal code to ensure harsher punishment, despite demands by local and international human rights activists.

AFP

Twenty six year old Quratul Ain eloped from her house six months ago, marrying the person with whom she intended to spend her entire life with. However, her dreams fell short when she was shot thrice in the name of honour.

The rental house where the deceased along with her husband took shelter in is located in the Gulshan-e-Ghazi within the jurisdiction of Malir City Police Station. Quratul Ain was killed in this ‘shelter’ house at around 3:00 am on Sunday when two armed men knocked on her door. Her husband was in the shower at the time; hearing the knocking she opened the door. “She recognised them and tired to flee but the men shot her thrice in her back,” SHO Jehangir Maher told Daily Times. The culprits easily fled the scene when the deceased’s husband Sheraz came out from the bathroom after hearing the sound of bullets and Quratul Ain’s screams.

Not only did her dreams come to an end but her husband’s as well. He helplessly watched his wife take her last breaths in front of him. It is pertinent to mention here that this is the second incident of honour killing in the last seven days. Earlier, on February 22, Elahi Bux surrendered himself after brutally killing his elderly sister Shehla Bibi in the name of honour within the jurisdiction of Korangi Industrial Area Police Station.

Quratul Ain’s body was taken to the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, however her husband took it away without legal formalities and an FIR No 48/09 was registered against the two unidentified men on behalf of Sheraz. The couple were Iranian Balochis; they met a long time ago and gradually fell in love. The deceased used to visit her aunts house located in Salaar Goth, close to Sheraz’s house. After Quratul Ain’s family engaged her to a relative, the couple decided to elope and get married in court. Maher further said that it is clear that the killing of the woman was done in the name of honour and added that the couple was being threatened by relatives of the deceased, who had disowned her after she eloped. The officer also said that the woman was not pregnant and no arrests were made.

Pakistan Daily Times

Rapes targeting girls as young as seven are on the increase in Afghanistan where conditions for women are little better than under the Taliban, the U.N. and rights groups say.

In its annual report on human rights, the U.N. warned conditions were deteriorating in the war-ravaged country despite U.S.-led efforts after the 2001 removal from power of the hardline militia.

“Violence is tolerated or condoned within the family and community, within traditional and religious leadership circles, as well as the formal and informal justice system,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

The “Afghan government has failed to adequately protect the rights of women despite constitutional guarantees.”

With a resurgent Taliban targeting NATO forces, government security forces and civilians, violence has been on the increase in Afghanistan..

The number of civilian casualties in 2008 totaled 2,118 — the highest number recorded since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, the U.N. said, urging greater protecting for ordinary Afghans.

Violence against women comes in the form of rape, “honor killings,” early and forced marriages, sexual abuse and slavery, the report says. “The security is the big issue,” said Suraya Pakzad, founder of the Voice of Women Organization, which promotes education and awareness of women’s rights and protects women and girls at risk in Afghanistan.
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“Because of security we, unfortunately, day by day, we have to pull out of areas where last year we operated, we have our operations. We were able to work with the women, but this year we cannot,” she said.

“We have to leave the area because security is getting worse day by day.”

“Rapes in the country have been growing tremendously, particularly child rapes within the ages of 9, 8, 7, even lesser than that,” said Wazhma Frogh, director of Global Rights Afghanistan.

“So these are the issues that are all born by this lack of security where women have no place in … security decisions.”

Domestic violence against child brides is widespread, said Suraya Pakzad, the founder of the Voice of Women organization, who was married at age 14 and has six children. She said girls as young as 10 face “violation” by husbands 40 years their senior. “By the end … women, or girls, run away.”

But women without husbands, especially widows, may have it even worse in Afghanistan, the report says. Without a spouse, the women are reduced to begging to feed their children.

Options outside the home are limited where the Taliban holds sway in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s interpretation of strict Islamic law, or sharia, has included banning girls from school and the workplace.

Even in areas not overrun by the Taliban, women face risks outside the home.

“The assassination of the most prominent national female senior police officer, in Kandahar in September 2008, underscores the tremendous risks faced by women in public life,” the report says.

CNN

The female journalist was snatched by members of a secret society, forcibly stripped and made to parade naked through the streets. It might sound like an atrocity from the time when Sierra Leone was ripped apart by a bloody civil war, but in fact the public humiliation was exacted in the diamond-rich eastern town of Kenema just this month. The woman’s alleged crime was reporting on female genital mutilation.

While the attack was condemned by media watchdogs as “disgraceful behaviour worthy of a bygone age”, one woman who was not surprised was Rugiatu Turay. When she was 12 Ms Turay was stolen away by family members and underwent what some politely refer to as “circumcision”. She calls it “torture”. For the past six years, she has been waging a war against the practice, which many in Sierra Leone, including senior politicians, see as an initiation rite.

Her organisation, the Amazonian Initiative Movement, tries to protect young girls from the knife. “I picked the name because I am trying to talk about strong, powerful women,” she says Ms Turay, who works with her 20-strong staff in and around the northern town of Lunsar. So far, she has persuaded about 400 practitioners of female genital mutiliation (FGM), who are often called soweis, to lay down their blades and stop their role in the traditional bondo ceremony. “Silence means consent. But if you say the truth people listen … We go to the schools, mosques, everywhere.”

As reward for her tenacious efforts, she has received death threats and been attacked by juju men, sometimes armed with magic, sometimes with machetes. She describes a time when more than a hundred people paraded a symbolic corpse outside her home to suggest her own death: “They came right in front of me sharpening their cutlasses.”

But so many times has she failed to die, that locals now think she is immune. “Now they believe I have special powers. They do nothing to me.”

Ms Turay was mutilated at her aunt’s house where she was staying with her three sisters and her cousin. “We didn’t even know that we were going to be initiated,” she says. “They called me to get water and then outside they just grabbed me.”

She was blindfolded, stripped, and laid on the ground. Heavy women sat on her arms, her chest, her legs. Her mouth was stuffed with a rag. Her clitoris was cut off with a crude knife. Despite profuse bleeding she was forced to walk, was beaten and had hot pepper water poured into her eyes.

“My mother had always told me never to let anyone touch me there. I was scared and I tried to fight them off. Nobody talked to me but there was all this clapping, singing, shouting,” recalls Ms Turay. “When I tried to walk on the seventh day I could not walk. All they could say is ‘Today you have become a woman’.”

Ms Turay is among the estimated 94 per cent of girls who undergo FGM in Sierra Leone. The practice – which forms part of a ceremony of initiation rites overseen by women-only secret societies such as bondo and sande – can cause severe bleeding, infection, cysts and sometimes death, but is largely ignored.

Reasons for the process vary, but many people cite tradition and culture, saying it is essential preparation for marriage and womanhood; binds communities to each other and to their ancestors; and restricts women’s sexual behaviour.

Last year, UN agencies came out strongly against the practice, labelling it “painful and traumatic”, a violation of human rights and demanding it be abandoned within a generation. “It has no health benefits and harms girls and women in many ways,” said the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO). “The practice causes severe pain and has several immediate and long-term health consequences, including difficulties in childbirth.”

Yet many international aid organisations are too scared to do anything about it in public for fear of being labelled cultural imperialists. A recent Sierra Leone child rights bill dropped any mention of FGM at the last minute, and politicians – including President Ernest Bai Koroma – baulk at the mention of the subject.

A decade ago, a female politician who later became the minister for social welfare said: “We will sew the mouths up of those preaching against bondo.” More recently, politicians are rumoured to have sponsored mass cutting ceremonies, which can be relatively costly affairs in one of the world’s poorest countries, in an effort to secure votes in elections.

“Secret societies have become intertwined with modern political life in Sierra Leone and retain considerable power and influence,” wrote the anthropologist Dr Richard Fanthorpe in a paper commissioned by the UN.

When I asked President Koroma – whose country receives more aid per person from Britain than any other donor recipient – about his position on the practice, it was the first time I saw the usually affable leader lost for words. Unable to reach for his usually ubiquitous wide toothy smile, he meandered awkwardly through an answer: “Let people in civil society deal with this issue.”

That leaves the fight against FGM, which the WHO says has been conducted on 92 million African girls – and rising by up to three million a year – to the odd brave soul such as Ms Turay. The 26-year-old is among a number of anti-FGM campaigners slowly achieving results. In her effort to keep some safe from cutting, Ms Turay has even adopted 14 children from Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Girls under 15 regularly undergo the cutting and for the newly initiated, it remains a frightening process shrouded in secrecy. “You should not tell anybody about circumcision or else your stomach will swell and you’ll die,” one young girl who didn’t know her age told me quietly in her local Temne language.

Ms Turay hopes her struggle will help break such taboos of talking about the cutting in public, although it may also spur more reactionary moves, such as this month’s punishment meted out to the journalist in Kenema. And it is no easy task persuading the practitioners to abandon what they see as a rite of passage. Girls as young as five are trained to become circumcisers and it is an income-generator in a poverty-stricken country, still struggling to shrug off the legacy of the 1991-2002 civil war.

“I didn’t like it when it happened to me and I worry about the pain of the girl, but I do it because they pay me, and because we met our ancestors doing it,” says practitioner Marion Kanu, 35, whose two children are also practitioners.

Others have seen the error of their ways. “I regret it now,” says another sowei who has vowed to stop. But it is not always easy to hang up the knife. One woman practitioner who said she would stop the cutting was kidnapped by members of the bundu society. Both her and her baby were beaten and taken to the bush for three days without food or water; the mother was raped. Her life was saved only by Ms Turay’s intervention.

The Independent

By: Mr. Imran Mazher (Rays of Development Organization)
MURIDKE, Pakistan: Father burnt his daughter to death for trying the knot with a boy of her choice at Nangal Sahdan here on Tuesday.
According to per details, Sadia daughter of Hajji Mohammad Siddique had contracted the marriage with the boy of her choice. Her father Hajji Mohammad Siddique was against the marriage.
On the report of the victim’s husband, the Sadr police have registered case against her father. Police arrested the murderer and during the investigations Hajji Siddique told police that she had no right to live with the husband of her choice because she had not consulted them before contracting the marriage.
Source:
Ferhan Mazher,
Chairman (Rays of Development Organization, Sargodha, Pakistan)

Sources at Hanjerwal Police Station claim to have arrested Sajjad Ali (25), who allegedly murdered his 18-year-old sister Asma Bibi, in the name of honour killing on Tuesday.

Hanjerwal Station House Officer Arshad Hayat Kanjo told Daily Times the accused had confessed to killing his sister in the name of honour.

He said police raided the house when the deceased’s family was washing the body. The accused said he had murdered his sister because she was a call girl, he added.

Kanjo said a case had been registered against the accused on the complaint of his father. The body had been shifted to the city morgue for autopsy

Daily Times