Honor killings and dowry deaths

In many places around the world, if a woman diminishes the "honor" of her family, she must die or be viciously punished. Twenty-seven-year-old Samia Sarwar, for example, who lived in the Pakistani city of Lahore, was engaged in pressing for a divorce from her husband, an act that her family considered shamefully dishonorable and profoundly embarrassing to them. So her mother, father, and paternal uncle hired a hit man, who on April 6,1999, shot Sarwar dead in her lawyer's office.

Hundreds of such murders occur annually in Pakistan, where choosing a spouse is also viewed as a crime against family honor. Honor reprisals may take the form, in addition to murder, of beatings, rape, burning, acid attacks, and mutilation.

"Women in Pakistan," says Human Rights Watch, "face staggeringly high rates of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence while their attackers largely go unpunished owing to rampant incompetence, corruption, and biases against women throughout the criminal justice system."

The same, however, could be said of dozens of other countries.

Dowry killings, on the other hand, occur largely on the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) and typically involve a newlywed bride who fails to produce a dowry sufficient to satisfy her husband and his family. The latter's only recourse, sanctioned by culture and tradition, is to do away with the hapless bride. The young groom then seeks a new one who has the means to bring him satisfactory honor and wealth.

Fueled by mushrooming consumerism, such dowry covetousness is estimated to kill one woman in India every six hours, often for a mere bicycle or television set, says Kirti Singh, a Supreme Court attorney from India. Police fail to view dowry killings as crimes.

According to the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), dowry killings in that country "included driving a woman to suicide or engineering an “accident” (frequently the bursting of a kitchen stove) to cause her death ... usually ... when the husband, often in collaboration with his side of the family, felt that the dowry or other gifts he had expected from his
in-laws in consequence of the marriage were not forthcoming, or/and he wanted to marry again, or he expected an inheritance from the death of his wife." Of the 215 "stove-death" cases in Lahore alone in 1997, police follow-up was imperceptible and no one was convicted.

Spousal abuse.

A slew of sociological studies in various countries over the past decade has revealed a startlingly similar portrait of abuse of women by their husbands or boyfriends. Country after country, whether wealthy or poor, Christian or Muslim or Buddhist, majority black or brown or white, displays the same pattern of a disturbingly high rate of assault against women by their intimate companions. For example.

· At least 20 per cent of women say they have been physically abused by a male partner in the last 12 months in Australia, Chile, South Korea, Nicaragua, Peru, Rwanda, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

· At least 20 per cent of women say they have been physically assaulted by the man in their current relationship in India, Kenya, Thailand, and Uganda.

· At least 20 per cent of women say they have experienced physical abuse at some point in their lives by a male companion in Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In addition, the United Nations Secretariat has compiled internal studies from yet other countries, publishing them in The World’s Women 1995, that sketch much the same picture.

A close cousin of physical violence against women is sexual violence. In the latter, a male companion forces his woman – through roughness, blows, threats, or weapon use – to have sex with him. Here again, serious scientific studies around the world show a pattern similar to that of physical abuse. While in a handful of nations and territories less than 10 per cent of women experienced sexual violence, in many others the rate was usually well over 20 per cent.

Akin to sexual violence is female genital mutilation (FGM). Although this is actually a cultural artifact common to many traditional societies in Africa and Asia, it is a form of violence against girls that affects their lives as adult women, making it difficult for them to appreciate the pleasure and joy of sexual intimacy with their husband.

According to the World Health Organization, FGM constitutes "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural or any other nontherapeutic reasons." Its goal is to ensure the self-respect of the girl on whom it is performed and to increase her marriage opportunities.

The practice, however, is officially condemned by more than 180 governments. It can cause severe and chronic health problems and can kill some young girls.

There are dozens of brush wars and small or large insurgencies around the world today, and the fact is that, whenever there is a war, women come out of it poorly. In the lawless environment of an armed conflict, females are routinely taken advantage of – raped, brutalized, or exploited. But none of these wars seems to be more broad and intense today than the conflict that subsumes all of them: the global war against women.

Washington Times National. Weekly edition. 2001

 

 

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