When 18-year-old Maha decided that she wanted to quit her family’s prostitution ring, her brother killed her and claimed it was to “cleanse” the family’s honor.
Maha is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of women in Jordan and elsewhere who rights groups say are killed every year by their male relatives in so-called honor crimes for “sullying” the reputation of their families.
The UN has reported such crimes in Brazil, Britain, Ecuador, India, Israel, Italy, Sweden and Uganda as well as in Muslim nations such as Morocco, Pakistan and Turkey.
Accurate figures on such killings are hard to come by because they often go unreported.
In Jordan, between 15 and 20 women are murdered annually in the name of “honor” and at least eight such killings have been reported so far this year, Jordanian authorities said. Last year 17 such murders were recorded.
But the label “honor killings” can be misleading.
Judges, lawyers, activists and experts agree that in most cases men exploit lenient laws and social misconceptions about women to murder them for inheritance, settling family feuds or to hide other crimes.
“Maha did not want to continue to prostitute herself, so her brother killed her,” said Israa Tawalbeh, Jordan’s first woman coroner.
Tawalbeh said Maha’s brother was a drug addict with a criminal record and ran the family’s prostitution ring.
“After killing his sister, he turned himself in and claimed that he murdered her to cleanse the family’s honor. Of course, forensic examination proved that she worked in prostitution, and the brother was sentenced to two years in prison,” she said.
In another case a few years ago, a man beat his 16-year-old daughter to death, claiming she was pregnant. Investigations, however, proved that he had molested the girl.
Judge Jehad Oteibi, spokesman for the Judiciary Council, said court records show that many “honor killings” are committed for reasons related to inheritance. Under Shariah-based laws in Jordan, female heirs are entitled to an inheritance, even though it is half of what male heirs receive.
“Forensic tests prove that a lot of victims were virgins, which show that there are other motives behind the killings,” Oteibi said.
Human Rights Watch says 95 percent of women killed in 1997 in Jordan in alleged honor killings were later proved to be innocent.
“Many women are forced to give up their rights or face death. Their families might kill them and allege it is related to honor and not money,” Oteibi said.
He said mothers testify against their daughters to protect their sons or husbands.
“Ignorance and poverty is a deadly mix,” the judge said.
University of Jordan sociologist Seri Nasser blamed the legal system.
“Most of the judges are males who use their powers to reduce the sentence,” Nasser said.
Perpetrators get reduced sentences as parliament has refused to reform the penal code to ensure harsher sentences, despite campaigns by local and international human rights activists.
According to Article 340 of the penal code, a defendant who “surprises his wife or any close female relative” in an act of adultery or fornication may invoke a defense of “crime of honor” should they murder the woman.
For women, “a wife who surprises her husband in the crime of adultery or in an unlawful bed in the marital home” may invoke a similar defense — though interestingly, there are no reports or any official figures on any “honor” killings of men in Jordan.
Qaddumi insisted along with other experts that Islam prohibits such crimes and that the problem is not “purely Jordanian.”
“To stop the killing of women Article 340 should be scrapped. I think Islamic Shariah law should be applied,” she said.
Under Shariah law, which prohibits premarital sex, “punishment for adultery or fornication can’t be enforced unless there is a confession by the culprit or a testimony of four reliable, sane and adult eyewitnesses who each saw the process of sexual intercourse.”
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS