Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.

But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.

[Note: two issues in paragraph below (1) "bride burning" or killing one's wife or daughter in-law because of insufficient dowry, and (2) husbands killing wives because of suspected infidelity and not being harshly punished if caught. ]

In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say.

"In countries where Islam is practiced, they're called honor killings, but dowry deaths and so-called crimes of passion have a similar dynamic in that the women are killed by male family members and the crimes are perceived as excusable or understandable," said Widney Brown, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

The practice, she said, "goes across cultures and across religions."

Complicity by other women in the family and the community strengthens the concept of women as property and the perception that violence against family members is a family and not a judicial issue.

"Females in the family—mothers, mother-in-laws, sisters, and cousins—frequently support the attacks. It's a community mentality," said Zaynab Nawaz, a program assistant for women's human rights at Amnesty International.

Women as Property

There is nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. However, the view of women as property with no rights of their own is deeply rooted in Islamic culture, Tahira Shahid Khan, a professor specializing in women's issues at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, wrote in Chained to Custom, a review of honor killings published in 1999.

"Women are considered the property of the males in their family irrespective of their class, ethnic, or religious group. The owner of the property has the right to decide its fate. The concept of ownership has turned women into a commodity which can be exchanged, bought and sold."

Honor killings are perpetrated for a wide range of offenses. Marital infidelity, pre-marital sex, flirting, or even failing to serve a meal on time can all be perceived as impugning the family honor.

Amnesty International has reported on one case in which a husband murdered his wife based on a dream that she had betrayed him. In Turkey, a young woman's throat was slit in the town square because a love ballad had been dedicated to her over the radio.

In a society where most marriages are arranged by fathers and money is often exchanged, a woman's desire to choose her own husband—or to seek a divorce—can be viewed as a major act of defiance that damages the honor of the man who negotiated the deal.

Even victims of rape are vulnerable. In a widely reported case in March of 1999, a 16-year-old mentally retarded girl who was raped in the Northwest Frontier province of Pakistan was turned over to her tribe's judicial council. Even though the crime was reported to the police and the perpetrator was arrested, the Pathan tribesmen decided that she had brought shame to her tribe and she was killed in front of a tribal gathering.

The teenage brothers of victims are frequently directed to commit the murder because, as minors, they would be subject to considerably lighter sentencing if there is legal action. Typically, they would serve only three months to a year.

In the Name of Family Honor

Officials often claim that nothing can be done to halt the practice because the concept of women's rights is not culturally relevant to deeply patriarchal societies.

"Politicians frequently argue that these things are occurring among uneducated, illiterate people whose attitudes can't be changed," said Brown. "We see it more as a matter of political will."

The story of Samia Imran is one of the most widely cited cases used to illustrate the vulnerability of women in a culture that turns a blind eye to such practices. The case's high profile no doubt arises from the fact that the murder took place in broad daylight, was abetted by the victim's mother, who was a doctor, and occurred in the office of Asma Jahangir, a prominent Pakistani lawyer and the UN reporter on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions.

In April 1999 Imran, a 28-year-old married woman seeking a divorce from her violent husband after 10 years of marriage, reluctantly agreed to meet her mother in a lawyers' office in Lahore, Pakistan. Imran's family opposed the divorce and considered her seeking a divorce to be shaming to the family's honor. Her mother arrived at the lawyer's office with a male companion, who immediately shot and killed Imran.

Imran's father, who was president of the Chamber of Commerce in Peshawar, filed a complaint with the police accusing the lawyers of the abduction and murder of Imran. The local clergy issued fatwas (religious rulings) against both women and money was promised to anyone who killed them.

The Peshawar High Court eventually threw out the father's suit. No one was ever arrested for Imran's death.

Imran's case received a great deal of publicity, but frequently honor killings are virtually ignored by community members. "In many cases, the women are buried in unmarked graves and all records of their existence are wiped out," said Brown.

Women accused by family members of bringing dishonor to their families are rarely given the opportunity to prove their innocence. In many countries where the practice is condoned or at least ignored, there are few shelters and very little legal protection.

"In Jordan, if a woman is afraid that her family wants to kill her, she can check herself into the local prison, but she can't check herself out, and the only person who can get her out is a male relative, who is frequently the person who poses the threat," said Brown.

"That this is their idea of how to protect women," Brown said, "is mind boggling."

Ending Violence Against Women

Violence against women is being tackled at the international level as a human rights issue. In 1994 the UN's Commission on Human Rights appointed a special rapporteur on violence against women, and both UNICEF and the UN Development Fund for Women have programs in place to address the issue.

But the politics of women's rights can be complex. Last year the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions was criticized by a coalition of member countries for including honor killings in her report, and a resolution condemning honor killings failed to pass.

Amnesty International is preparing to launch a worldwide campaign to halt violence against women in 2003.

But a lot of the work needs to be done at the local level.

"Police officers and prosecutors need to be convinced to treat these crimes seriously, and countries need to review their criminal codes for discrimination against women—where murder of a wife is treated more leniently than murder of a husband, for instance," said Brown.

Countries that don't recognize domestic violence as a crime at all need to bring their penal codes up to international standards, she said, adding that increased public awareness and greater education about human rights would also help.

Some progress has been made.

In a National Geographic documentary (which airs beginning Wednesday, February 13), Michael Davie investigated honor killings in Pakistan, where it is estimated that every day at least three women—including victims of rape—are victims of the practice.

The case of one of the victims Davie examined is heartbreaking but also hopeful. Zahida Perveen, a 29-year-old mother of three, was brutally disfigured and underwent extensive facial reconstruction in the United States. She is one of the only survivors in Pakistan to successfully prosecute the attacker—her husband.

"The reason honor killings have emerged as a human rights issue is that it's the only way ultimately that it can be addressed," said Freeman. "Naming the problem and bringing international attention to it highlights the refusal of some of these governments to shine any kind of light on their failure to protect their own citizens.

"Change can't happen if it's just people working inside the system; they're overwhelmed. International campaigns and media attention give them some ballast and the ability to say 'Look, the world is watching what is going on here,' and provides support for making change in their own countries."

World Diary: Honor Killings premieres in the United States February 13, 2002, on the National Geographic Channel. Click here for details of the documentary and how to get the Channel and see program listings:

Read an interview with Mick Davie, the filmmaker/correspondent who made the World Diary documentary on the feudalistic practice of honor killings in Pakistan:

 

For Muslim women, a deadly defiance 'Honor killings' on rise in Europe By Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe Staff  |  January 16, 2006 [Note: 'Honor Killings" of Muslim women living in Europe and marrying without their family's permission] BERLIN -- Life was just starting to look up for 23-year-old Hatun Surucu when the bullets cut her down. After four years of grueling courses in vocational school, coupled with the demands of single motherhood, she was only weeks away from receiving certification as an electrician, a trade that would give her the independence she desperately craved. It had been a rough road: Eight years earlier, her parents, Turkish immigrants, had yanked Surucu from eighth grade, bundled her off to Istanbul, and forced her to marry an older cousin. Miserable in Turkey, she had fled her husband and returned to Berlin with her infant son, determined to make her own way as a modern woman in a secular society, according to friends. For a Muslim barely out of girlhood, it was an act of extraordinary defiance against her family. And it cost Surucu her life. As Europe's Muslims become increasingly conservative, growing numbers of women are being killed or mutilated in the name of ''family honor," according to law enforcement agencies, women's activist groups, and moderate Islamic organizations. These cases usually involve an attack on a Muslim woman by a close relative -- typically a brother or father -- angered by her refusal to accept a forced marriage or her insistence on leading a Western-style life. There were at least eight such slayings in Berlin alone in 2005, and 47 honor killings of Muslim women across Germany in the past six years, according to police, media reports, and activist groups. Not coincidentally, activists say, tens of thousands of European-born Muslim women are annually forced into unwanted marriages, often to much older men, in their family's home countries. Refusal to submit to such marriages can bring a death sentence. Following a spate of headline-grabbing cases, including Surucu's murder, European countries are slowly coming to recognize honor killings as a distinct crime. In Great Britain, for example, a police review of 22 domestic homicides last year resulted in 18 being reclassified as ''murder in the name of so-called 'honor.' " Scotland Yard has reopened probes into 109 suspicious deaths, covering a 10-year span, that seem to have been family conspiracies to kill Muslim women. The violent trend, say authorities, reflects the strengthening grip of religious fundamentalism among the continent's 16 million Muslims, many of whom suffer from rising unemployment, inadequate education, and -- perhaps above all -- the sense of being unwelcome outsiders in their adopted homes. As Muslim men embrace radical Islam and return to age-old customs, women are paying a cruel price. ''There is a lost generation of Muslims in Europe," said Eren Uensal, spokeswoman for the Turkish Federation of Berlin. ''Ten years ago, Muslims here were more modern, more secular than those 'back home.' Now the situation has reversed. The younger men feel there is no place for them in Europe, but they also feel there is no place else for them." Islamic radical groups are filling the vacuum. ''The most alarming thing they teach is that violence is an acceptable way to enforce religious views or social customs," Uensal said. ''Much of that violence is against women." Hatun Surucu's murder was fairly typical of Europe's recent honor killings. Her parents and brothers in Berlin were outraged when Surucu abandoned her husband and returned to Germany with her infant son, Can. Even deeper than the anger was the family's sense of disgrace at this display of female independence, according to court testimony and family friends. But Surucu wanted to make her own way. She stayed at a Berlin women's shelter only long enough to complete middle school. Then she found a part-time job, moved into a tiny apartment, and enrolled in a vocational program. Further enraging her family, she abandoned the hijab -- the traditional head scarf worn by some Muslim women -- in favor of earrings, makeup, and blue jeans. Her son, now 6, was the light of her life, friends say. But Surucu also loved movies and going out dancing. ''All she wanted, really, was to be an ordinary person, just a normal young woman," said Georg Neumann, a friend of Surucu's at the vocational school. On the night of Feb. 7, 2005, at a bus stop two blocks from her apartment, Surucu was waiting under a street lamp when bullets tore into her chest and face at point-blank range. The slaying, according to police, was a family affair. Three of Surucu's five brothers have been charged with murder. One has already confessed in a chilling court statement. ''She wanted her own circle of friends" outside the family, Ayhan Surucu, 18, said of his sister. ''It was too much." Ayhan, the youngest brother, is charged with pulling the trigger. An older brother is charged with acquiring the gun, and a middle brother is accused of luring his sister to the murder scene with a phone call in which he said the family wanted to discuss reconciliation. ''She was still so much wanting to be one with her family," Neumann said. ''She didn't want to be cut off from them. She only wanted them to accept that she could have her own life." Britain opened a review of the suspicious cases after a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq, Abdullah Yones, held his 16-year-old daughter over a bathtub and slashed her throat in 2004 after discovering that she was trading love letters with a boy in her high school class in London. In court last year, Yones insisted that his daughter brought her fate on herself. On the day he was sentenced to life imprisonment, dozens of approving Kurdish men came to court to show solidarity with Yones, according to media accounts. In a more recent German case, Goenuel Karabey, 20, the daughter of Turkish immigrants living in Berlin, refused a forced marriage last June and disappeared with her boyfriend, a Christian. Humiliated, her father and brothers tracked her down in Wiesbaden, in western Germany, at the home of the boyfriend's mother. Karabey was shot dead in the garden after agreeing to speak with her family. Her brother, Ali, later surrendered the murder weapon to police, according to media reports. Along with last year's subway bombings in London by home-grown Islamic zealots and riots in the Arab suburbs of France, the honor killings in Europe have horrified a continent that, until recent years, has paid little heed -- many politicians now concede -- to the religious fundamentalism breeding in its midst. Moderate Islamic groups and some European leaders are warning that honor killings reflect a trend of fundamentalism that sneers at Western laws and values. ''There are two societies with two different value systems living side by side -- but wholly apart -- in Europe," said Seyran Ates, a Berlin lawyer of Turkish origin who often works with women trying to escape forced marriages. The first two generations of immigrants, Ates said, found plentiful jobs and were generally content. But the generation of European-born Muslims now coming of age, Ates said, ''never integrated into Western society [and] are becoming more and more conservative, not less so." A Berlin group, Wildwasser, provides hiding places for girls ages 12 to 18 who feel their lives are in danger, mainly because of their refusal to enter forced marriages or to quit school in favor of duties at home. ''So many cases we see involve young [Muslim] girls who are exposed to ideas of equality and freedom, and take to these ideas like flowers to the sun," said Mehriban Ozer, a social worker for Wildwasser. ''They want to go to school. They want a life. The violence comes from fathers and brothers . . . who now see the tiniest step toward freedom by a female to be a terrible break from tradition." Although Muslims represent less than 5 percent of the German population, about half of the girls who come to Wildwasser fleeing violence at home are Turks, Arabs, North Africans, or West Asians from strict Islamic families, according to Trina Leichsenring, the group's director. The rise of fundamentalism among Muslims in Europe can be blamed, at least partially, on the failure of countries to integrate the millions of Muslims who started arriving in large numbers in the 1960s. Two generations later, most lead lives largely segregated from the mainstream. ''It's been taboo to discuss integration. It offends those who say every expression of cultural difference is somehow wonderful," said Heinz Buschkowsky, mayor of the Berlin borough of Neukoelln, where more than a third of the residents are Arabs and Turks. ''But now, with culture being expressed by covering women's faces or killing a girl who refuses to marry some old man in the home village, perhaps it is time to break the taboo." In Neukoelln's largely immigrant Thomas Morus school, not far from the place where Hatun Surucu was murdered, students greeted news of her slaying with loud approval. Her brothers were hailed as local heroes. The principal, Volker Steffans, was so disgusted by the display that he sent a letter to parents, to be read and signed, explaining what he had always regarded as obvious -- that girls should not be harassed for refusing to wear head scarves; that girls should not be attacked for wanting to pursue careers; that women should not be murdered for expecting tolerance and equality in a Western society. ''A murder happened nearby; a young woman was killed. She died because she wanted to live freely," Steffans said. ''But we are shocked by the fact that students approve of this murder and say [Surucu] deserved to die because she 'lived like a German.' " Petra Krischok, a news assistant in the Globe's Berlin bureau, contributed to this report.

'Honor' killing spurs outcry in Syria

A 16-year-old's killing spurred the country's grand mufti to call for legal reform and protections.

By Rasha Elass | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0214/p07s02-wome.html

DAMASCUS, SYRIA

Sixteen-year-old Zahra Ezzo died at the hospital last month after a brutal attack. But it was her brother who confessed to killing her – and her family who appointed him to carry out the murder.

Some experts estimate that 200 to 300 honor killings like Zahra's occur every year in Syria. Most receive little or no attention. But Zahra's murder – in part because it happened in the capital and not a rural area – has compelled Syria's grand mufti, cleric Ahmad Hassoun, to publicly condemn the crime, calling for the first time for the immediate protection of girls at risk and for legal reform on the basis that such crimes are un-Islamic. President Bashar al-Assad has also promised to find a solution.

Among the public, too, debate is rising about the practice and the laws that protect men who carry out such killings.

A key question is whether the brother should go on trial for premeditated murder – the family had planned it for months – or as someone who had no choice because the clan's honor was at stake.

Syria's law is lenient on a man who kills or injures his female relative if he catches her in "illegitimate sexual acts with another," or in a "suspicious state with another." If Zahra's brother is tried under this law, he might get out of jail in three months.

"This is what we're trying to change," said Yumun Abu al-Hosn, a founding member of the Association for Women's Role Development, one of the few nongovernment organizations in Syria. The association runs the girls'

shelter where Zahra took refuge in her final months.

"We may not be able to stop honor killings overnight, but at least if the crime is tried as premeditated murder, then Zahra and others like her will have some dignity in death."

Zahra's case is also compelling because of the events surrounding it.

According to Zahra before her death, say sources who spoke to her before she died, her father was having an extramarital affair. If the clan had discovered this, Zahra's father and his mistress might have both been killed. A friend of Zahra's father, a young man who took a liking to the then-15-year-old, threatened to tell all unless Zahra ran away with him.

She agreed. But when the clan discovered that Zahra had left, they decided to pursue both and kill them. But the police found them first. They put the man in jail, where he stands to serve a 15-year prison sentence for the kidnap and rape of a minor, and where he is safe from the clan's wrath. They put Zahra in the shelter.

But only for nine months. During that time, Zahra's family tried three times to regain custody of her, but the association refused, saying the family could not guarantee Zahra's safety.

The family then asked one of Zahra's cousins to marry her, which according to tradition would restore honor to the family. Fawaz hardly knew Zahra and was not in on the plot to kill her. He agreed to marry her first out of chivalry, then because he fell in love with her.

Her family and the family of her soon-to-be-husband all came to the shelter to formalize her marriage, and her father signed a sworn statement guaranteeing that neither he nor anyone in the family would harm Zahra.

So Zahra, whose name means flower, moved into her new husband's home, an apartment one floor below her new in-laws in Damascus.

But one month later, her brother came to visit. On the morning of his third day with them, when Zahra's husband went to work and Zahra slept in, Fayez stabbed his sister to death.

Violence against women is coming under growing scrutiny in the Arab world.

Last year, the United Nations Development Fund for Women sponsored for the first time a study on it in Syria, concluding that 1 in 4 women suffers physical abuse, usually from a male relative.

But honor killings, which happen in many Arab and Muslim countries as well as in Israel and Western Europe, are a touchy subject. Local religious and political leaders are usually reluctant to become involved in a clan's family affair, and authorities in many countries rarely report a crime as an honor killing, making gathering statistics very difficult.

Activists say that lawyers in countries with leniency laws for such killings often advise a male client accused of murder to claim it was in the name of honor to avoid the death penalty.

"There are hidden motives behind these murders. It could be for inheritance or for financial reasons or because the victim wanted to choose her husband – or she's been raped or she's a victim of incest,"

said Rana Husseini, a Jordan-based activist who is writing a book on honor killing.

Reforms are often slow or unusually targeted. Morocco, for example, recently gave women the right to a light sentence if they killed in a fit of fury.

"They said this way we're making our laws 'equal.' But how many women kill men? No one needs a PhD to realize that the impact will be discriminatory," said Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director at Equality Now, a New York-based international human rights organization.