Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Honor Killings & Shafak's Honor


From yesterday's BBC article "Kashmir couple arrested over gruesome 'honour killing:'"
Police in Pakistan-administered Kashmir say they have arrested a couple on charges of murdering their own daughter in the name of honour. The couple admitted to killing the unmarried 18-year-old when they found out she was pregnant, police said. Villagers found the girl's chopped-up body parts in a river, and were able to identify her by the disembodied head. 
Such killings were once rare in Kashmir, but police say they are now happening much more frequently. This is the third reported "honour killing" in the region in five months. 
In October last year in the same Kotli district, police arrested a mother and father on suspicion of murdering their 15-year-old daughter by dousing her with acid in the name of "honour". The couple later told the BBC, while in police custody, that they had killed their daughter for looking at a boy...  
Honour killings are also on the rise across Pakistan, says the country's Human Rights Commission. In 2011 - the last year for which statistics are available - 943 women were killed, an increase of more than 100 on 2010.

For a novel on honor killings, try Elif Shafak's Honor. Here's the review from the Independent:
The first chapter of this novel begins with a daughter in mourning, and develops into an intricate story of an honour killing. We follow three generations of Turkish-Kurds as Shafak weaves her narrative twists, and combines times, places and linguistic inflections with extraordinary dexterity, from 1950s working-class Istanbul to 1970s Hackney and then Shrewsbury prison, 20 years later. This is a powerful tale of cross-cultural lives, motherhood, male violence and cycles of rage and revenge.

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