Honour Strikes Again
Just the other day I was thinking of the role that women in leadership must play to help society move towards gender equality by cooperating with women’s civil society organizations. This duty is often clouded by “differences” between women in various leadership posts.
At the call of the The Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW), women ministers, deputies, mayors, and others met last week to discuss ways to cooperate to lobby for women’s causes in the country. This is a good step forward I think, but I withhold judgment until something tangible comes out of it — like suggestions to achieve equality for women in the various laws.
Take this an example of legal and social discrimination against women in Jordan:
20-year-old kills his sister in so-called honour crime
By Rana Husseini
AMMAN - The criminal prosecutor on Saturday charged a 20-year-old man with the premeditated murder of his younger married sister in the Jordan Valley for reasons related to family honour, official sources said.
The suspect reportedly confessed to stabbing his sibling to death at their family home a day after she was released from custody by the administrative governor, the source told The Jordan Times.
After the incident, the suspect waited for the police to come and arrest him and when they arrived at the scene, he claimed he killed his sibling, who was married at the age of 16 and had a one-year-old child, to cleanse his family’s honour, the source added.
His sister’s husband accused her of seeing other men and she went missing from his home a few days before the incident, according to the source.
“The authorities found the victim and she was detained for a while by the administrative governor, who handed her over to her family on Thursday after her father signed a JD5,000 guarantee that he would not harm his daughter,” the source said.
The victim went home with her father on Thursday and on Friday morning her brother murdered her, the source said, adding that the criminal prosecutor did not press charges against other family members, but ordered her brother detained.
The victim’s husband refused to press charges against the suspect, a source close to the investigation told The Jordan Times.
The victim became the seventh woman to be killed in a so-called honour crime in Jordan since the beginning of the year.
She is also the third woman to be killed for reasons related to family honour in May.
Every time something as atrocious as this happens in my country, I feel a piece of me has died. When I think about it, I feel that I am powerless except to shout from the bottom of an abyss. There has to be something you and I can do about it, I hate to think we are so insignificant in the face of organized and legalized murder. What can we do?
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June 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
“What can we do?”
That’s the only matter of discussion here. We’re not gonna discuss whether her brother had the right to do it or not, nor the role of her family, nor the role of her husband
. And I hope, I just hope, that we won’t spend our time discussing the fact that the brother is most likely a victim himself, and imagining different scenarios on how they persuaded him and such.
Positive procedures in order to stop this legally-allowed free kill must consider the following:
They’re all in it together. The government that allows this kill to go unpunished, the parliament -that is either too ignorant or too close-minded- that wouldn’t dare pass a law that stops this, the religion men -that are too scared to stare this issue in the eye- that they won’t dare touch it with a 100 feet pole, and last -but not the least- the Society that approves this crime, runs and then then rewards it.
GO ahead and persuade hundreds of thousands of years of male-domination that it is NOT OK to kill your sister if she speaks with a boy, you’re NOT being a good brother.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Let’s gather, us women of Jordan. Let’s start with a meeting, with the King and Queen. Somehow, somewhere. Let’s not give up even if we’re rejected a million times. Let’s start this, even if we don’t finish, let’s just start.
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIiaCu2HhrM
June 5th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Damn.
I only read this now, i went back to alghad archives and I didn’t find anything about this. How come?!
So what happens to the brother? Are we sure he will receive a reduced sentence?
June 6th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Most likely
since the husband refused to press charges. Plus this crime was committed in a “state of anger”, or whatever. Most cases, the brother spends six months in jail (most of this time would pass in the process of trial….etc) and then comes out to the society as the hero they made him think he is. well-played, huh?