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TechnoratiSULAYMANIYAH - 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 "honor" 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 honor-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 honor 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 organizations 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 honor 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."
©independent.co.uk
26 Comments so far
Show AllHi Jan: I wanted to respond to Jewbacca's vile slurs about the Arab culture, but you beat me to it. Your post was excellent. I can't add to it, because you said everything I wanted to say. Thanks.
Those of you blaming Jewbacca for racism have it wrong in my estimation. This war, wrong as it is, has nothing to do with honor killing. Honor killing is, as noted by other commentors, a fundamentalist problem. However, it is a highly significant and numerically superior problem in muslim societies, where women have little or no personal freedoms and are treated as if they are owned by males. Point is, there even have been some honor killings in the US by fathers and brothers who are offended that their daughters or sisters have talked to another man without a male "minder". Blame all fundamentalists if you will, but that is mainly a smokescreen. Muslim culture is the problem- fundamentalist muslims, and there are many of them, have the power to kill their women for ridiculous reasons, and the police or government do nothing. Why? They live by the same rules....ergo, a sick society.
Thank God I'm an Atheist!!
You guys need to take a look at the culture you support a little more.
Right, the culture we support. I don't see what any of this has to do with Israel ...
What has happened to our collective humanity?
Why is there so much savagery toward our fellow man? What have we become?
Jewbacca said "You guys need to take a look at the culture you support a little more."
Honour Killing is not permitted in Islam.
Honour killing occurs in all sorts of cultures.
The Jewbacca says that in the U.S. "It's illegal."
Well it isn't legal in Iraq either.
The trouble starts when extemists like U.S. Neocons invade ILLEGALLY, and the state is dismantled.
"Honour killing" is a terrible thing anywhere. However it is a damned convenient propaganda tool to claim human rights reasons to "stay the course" in Iraq. The invading imperialists and colonialists have always claimed they are there to "civilize the natives" when really they are after the loot and booty for their own comfort.
Enough of this U.S. or Israeli hypocrit called "Jewbacca". Do we need to list all the killings done in honour of the Israeli land grabs or the U.S. oil grabs. These two nations have really barbaric cultures masquading as civilized.
I love it that the lonely, bitter women of commondreams use this story as an opportunity to declare jihad and bring out all sorts of complaints against the american male.
Yes, there is lots of sick violence against women in america, however:
It's illegal.
It's not ideological. I think its more caused by factors like poverty and hard drug (meth, crack, alcohol) use and abuse then any ideology that can be compared to what exists in the arab (and kurdish) world. And, here we can fight it with the law.
Supporting concealed firearms for women doesn't hurt either.
Bucky
You must know different men than the ones I know.. This sounds like typical male behavior to me....
We have guys who do stuff like this too... I mean kill their girlfriends when they find out they have been screwing around on the side....
Furthermore, the pathetic so-called men on both sides of this story -- the picture-takers/senders and the honor killers -- all think they own these women's bodies. The picture-takers think they have the right to show off these bodies as their trophies and the killers think they have the right too exterminate these bodies for disobedience. Screw religion and culture -- if there ever will be equality on this planet this perceived ownership needs to be overcome. Privilege is violence and dies hard, though.
-Bucky
And AlexLawyer, and let's not forget the Bible with all of its encouragement and approval of slavery, infanticide, child molestation, incest, rape, mass murder and genocide.
"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."
Bad Religion? Bad Phone Technology?
I think the headline should read:
Pathetic Egomaniacal Misogynist Assholes Have Fueled Frenzy of Honor Killing in Iraq
I'm so sick of this sort of boys club locker room BS I could just puke. Real men do not treat women like crap! Real men do not treat women like pieces of meat, play toys, or like they're disposable. Sentences like the ones quoted above make it difficult to aspire to nonviolence because I want to drag such "men" into the street and beat them into a puddle of mush.
So many men try to climb the hierarchy by stepping on others that it makes me embarrassed to be male sometimes. That's part of the barbarism of this story, and it is not isolated to Iraq, it exists everywhere. Perhaps John Stoltenberg's "Refusing to be a Man" should become required reading worldwide. Or we could still go with the beating them in the streets plan. Let me know...
-Bucky
Saddam Hussain was a tyrant and a thug, but at least his government maintained some semblance of public order. We have unleashed anarchy and stand around impotently while congratulating ourselves on our brilliance and success. The veneer of civilzation is thinner than we'd like to think everywhere.
All religions have a dark side, but not all are equal. Buddhism probably has the least intrinsic violence, and Islam the most. The Koran contains incitements to wife beating, child molestation, genocide, armed robbery, aggressive war, enslavement and rape. Most Muslims fortunately don't comply, but it's there and all believe that these things are ordained by Allah. Therefore the potential for these values to break through and be implemented in chaotic, stressful times without the rule of law must be understood.
staying, actually, the us policy of kissing saudi ass and paying top dollar for their oil has not impoverished, but absurdly enriched the middle east. They have NOTHING to complain about vis a vis american economics. You are a LOT more right with your comments about Paul Bremer and Saddam though. Saddam DID keep this kind of crap in check. But it just shows the character of the people in that part of the world that as soon as they are able to, this is how they behave.
Ugarit: I am aware of the "difference" between kurds and arabs, however, this is an aspect of arab culture that the kurds share. I respect the kurds more then their southern cousins, but not much more.
You guys need to take a look at the culture you support a little more.
Ladies and gentlemen, what an example of how bigoted JewBacca is:
"Picture phones haven't fueled anything, BARBARIC ARAB CULTURE is responsible for honor killings!"
Her bigotry really represents most supporters of Israel. Firstly Kurds are not Arabs secondly this phenomena is clearly not only an arab nor a muslim one.
This is a commentary on the status of women in these cultures. Can it change? I'm not optimistic when the bias is religion-based and accepted and internalized by the females in the culture. When we can liberate our culture from dogmatic and arbitrary religious "rules", we might have a chance. But freeing ourselves from this seems very difficult given the emotional and psychological hold that religion, inculcated from childhood, has over so many people.
How about AMERICA'S CULTURE - one that consists of bombing the crap out of other countries for no reason whatsoever, and having no qualms about doing so, let alone having any guilt.
How about AMERICA'S CULTURE of having fun while it simultaneously bombs the hell out of women and children abroad and pillages other countries' resources.
AMERICA'S CULTURE OF VIOLENCE AND IMPERIALISM has killed and impoverished more women and children in the Middle East - and elsewhere in the world - than any religious extremist group could ever hope to achieve.
Jewbacca writes: "Picture phones haven't fueled anything, BARBARIC ARAB CULTURE is responsible for honor killings!"
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Actually, Jewbacca, a complete lack of law and order and a representative government has fuelled honor killings.
Bush put Paul Bremer in charge of Iraq after the invasion, and Bremer's priority was to try to sell off Iraqi assets at fire sale prices, to impose a flat rate tax of just 15% on foreign corporations (something they've always dreamt of having), and numerous other brutal economic policies Americans wouldn't stand for, including banning ALL unions in the state sector, forbidding oil unions from having any influence, and the complete removal of tariffs and quotas - and then doing nothing as Iraqi businesses drowned in a sea of cheap imports.
Iraqi oil workers in 2003/2004 threatened to join the insurgency over the pay rates set by Paul Bremer. They were being paid a measly $40 a MONTH.
Had Bush implemented policies to create jobs for Iraqis, which is what Iraqis had asked for - "A job for every Iraqi" was the slogan - had bush tried to unite the country rather than destroy 60% of Fallujah, creating 200,000 refugees who were then left to fend for themselves by both America and its Shia puppet government - creating more divisions between Shias and Sunnis - had Bush put Iraqis first, and shown them that he was committed to helping their country get back on its feet, a secular government in Iraq would very likely have been acceptable to most Iraqis.
But Bush did none of these things. He merely antagonized the Iraqis, so much so, they had to DEMAND elections in the hope of shaking themselves free of America's grip. And America had to give them the elections they wanted in the hope of quelling the violence. However, in such a hostile atmosphere, political candidates were forced to keep their identities hidden. As Iraqis didn't know who they would be voting for, they chose to vote along religious lines, and the result is a bloody, almighty mess created by Bush The Almighty.
This happens in other cultures as well. I think the point of the article was that camera phones make it easier to catch people in the act, or prove that people have been having sex. I agree that religious fundamentalism is part of the problem, but the author's point was that the phones are only making it worse. This is not only an Arab problem however, jewbacca, and I agree, you're a racist asshole. Fundamentalism exists in all cultures, including the good ole' US of A. Here we have religious idiots denying evolution, supporting war because they want to bring on Armegeddon, and saying the Bible legitimizes discrimination. I think all three of the Western, monotheistic religions are to blame for most of the violence in the modern world - any wonder - they are using as their justification a book that was written over 2000 years ago by a bunch of delusional men wandering around in the desert. It will only be when the bible is exposed to be the fraud that it is that the world will be free of Judaeo-Christ-Islamo facism.
Namaste- exactly right. this and all the "sectarian strife" etc. are the unforeseen consequences of the brutal invasion/occupation/daily murders the u.s. has inflicted on Iraq.
I would like to also point out that calling these acts "barbaric" is not fair. Barbarians were not much into religion and more often than not behaved much better than these loonies are doing. They really are religious murders, and churchpeople need to stop blaming anyone but themselves and their cranky old god. I was instructed in the book of Deuteronomy to stone my daughters to death because they don't believe in that god. I chose not to because i'd rather be a barbaric infidel who loves his children.
arobtth
Jewbacca is hardly a racist coward making the point the author was avoiding. I agree completely with him but would have said barbaric muslim/shia culture. don't blame the phones blame the culture
Jewbacca, you are a racist coward.
Patrick, please tell us more about Kurdistan.
I have long been sympathetic to the Kurdish struggle for national liberation, and the Kurds I have known have all been progressive in their views. But now we see Iraqi Kurdistan serving as a bulwark of and apologist for the American occupation, leading the demand for crushing the Sadrist movement that represents Iraq's poorest and most oppressed people.
And then there is this, these barbaric killings of women, this barbaric oppression of women (which I might add is similar to that found in Christian Mediterranean cultures, but apparently going amok in Iraq and Kurdistan). How did a movement for liberation from Saddam's Iraq come to this?
Is there a bright spot in this, a ray of hope for the liberation of Iraq and the birth of a brighter future for the Middle East somewhere in the story of Kurdistan?
And in every country in the world - including the US of A, women are looked upon in the same way. We've just managed to rise above it somewhat, but there are still groups who'd love to get us back to where we were in the not so distant past when we were nothing more that the property of a man, without rights, including being allowed to keep property and raise our children alone if our husband died.
What an utterly pathetic article.
Picture phones haven't fueled anything, BARBARIC ARAB CULTURE is responsible for honor killings!
Cockburn, you are a moral coward.
It is sad that the politicization of Islam by it's right wing members, like the politicization of Christianity and Judaism by our and the Israeli religious right leads to violence and repression.
All three religions "People of the Book" are primarily religions of love and caring, but the violent, historical parts, are used to foment hatred and violence as "Christian," "Judiac" or "Islamic" acts.
Whatever happened to empathy? What ever happened to "Do not unto others as you would not have done unto you," "Love thy neighbor as thyself," "Love one another?"
The problems of the world will never be solved by trying to kill everyone who thinks or acts differently than you do. Education, understanding, and empathy are the keys. Otherwise, it all comes down to thee and me, with only one of us left standing. Probably a good thing for the planet, but hard on the human race.
The three Abrahamic faiths may be all about love, but they all sure have quite a big following of the psychopathic persusion. Time for the silent majorities to speak up, they are all being held hostage by the lunatics.