Cultural Honour Killing
Sad, isn't it, when killing someone near and dear is considered to be a necessary cleansing act in obedience to a perception that one's religion compels that kind of action. When cultural compulsions override the natural proclivity of a parent to protect, love and honour his children, and drives him instead to a frenzy of inchoate bitterness and hatred, resulting in the death of the child, one sees the ultimate barbarity that people accept as a righteous imposition.
It is the girls, the women, whose flagrant disregard for the honour of their families that is responsible for their untimely, sometimes gruesome deaths. When brothers, uncles or fathers dispatch themselves on a mission to redeem the family honour, besmirched by a wayward child. A young girl who restively will not accept what her father insists she must; abjure from flinging herself into modernity rather than accept traditional modes of modesty becoming a female born into a fanatically strictured society.
Defy parental authority to become one of a group of other young women embarked on an evening of music and interaction with young men? Insult familial expectations by succumbing to an attraction to a man outside one's traditions and religion and ethnic group? Spurn the dress code incumbent on all good daughters of a cultural group or a religiously-observant one? Experience the grave ill fortune of experiencing a violent sexual assault?
Any one of these infractions of familial expectations in the deportment of young women may be seen as reason that they have, through their disobedience, or misfortune, merited the wrath of the head of the family, who can see no other way of redeeming family honour than by murdering the offending family member. So it was with 15-year-old Aqsa Parvez, whose father and brother , Muhammad Parvez, and Waqas, charged with first-degree murder, have appeared in court for their preliminary hearing.
Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death while returning briefly to her family home, by her enraged father, assisted by her brother, on December 10, 2007. She refused to wear the traditional hijab. She defied her father, left the family home to take refuge with friends, sleeping away at their homes, or at community shelters. How lost that child must have felt, despite her defiance, her resolve to live her life as she would.
And another, more recent, New Year's Day murder of a 22-year-old woman, Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, whose father-in-law stabbed her in the neck. Inflicting wounds on his own body, in an attempt to cover his brutal attack, feigning victimhood. The young woman, with a 22-month-old child, was in an arranged marriage, where her family paid a dowry of over $100,000. Kamikar Singh Dhillon, her father-in-law, was arrested for first-degree murder.
What can possibly influence people to believe that in murdering another human being, a trusting and helpless woman, they are redeeming some version of family honour in reflection of their cultural beliefs?
It is the girls, the women, whose flagrant disregard for the honour of their families that is responsible for their untimely, sometimes gruesome deaths. When brothers, uncles or fathers dispatch themselves on a mission to redeem the family honour, besmirched by a wayward child. A young girl who restively will not accept what her father insists she must; abjure from flinging herself into modernity rather than accept traditional modes of modesty becoming a female born into a fanatically strictured society.
Defy parental authority to become one of a group of other young women embarked on an evening of music and interaction with young men? Insult familial expectations by succumbing to an attraction to a man outside one's traditions and religion and ethnic group? Spurn the dress code incumbent on all good daughters of a cultural group or a religiously-observant one? Experience the grave ill fortune of experiencing a violent sexual assault?
Any one of these infractions of familial expectations in the deportment of young women may be seen as reason that they have, through their disobedience, or misfortune, merited the wrath of the head of the family, who can see no other way of redeeming family honour than by murdering the offending family member. So it was with 15-year-old Aqsa Parvez, whose father and brother , Muhammad Parvez, and Waqas, charged with first-degree murder, have appeared in court for their preliminary hearing.
Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death while returning briefly to her family home, by her enraged father, assisted by her brother, on December 10, 2007. She refused to wear the traditional hijab. She defied her father, left the family home to take refuge with friends, sleeping away at their homes, or at community shelters. How lost that child must have felt, despite her defiance, her resolve to live her life as she would.
And another, more recent, New Year's Day murder of a 22-year-old woman, Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, whose father-in-law stabbed her in the neck. Inflicting wounds on his own body, in an attempt to cover his brutal attack, feigning victimhood. The young woman, with a 22-month-old child, was in an arranged marriage, where her family paid a dowry of over $100,000. Kamikar Singh Dhillon, her father-in-law, was arrested for first-degree murder.
What can possibly influence people to believe that in murdering another human being, a trusting and helpless woman, they are redeeming some version of family honour in reflection of their cultural beliefs?
posted by Pieface @ 6:22 PM
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