Five women buried alive in “honor” killings; Pakistani lawmaker unsure what the big deal is
Women buried alive in ‘honour’ killings
Aug 30, 2008 09:37 AM
ROBIN McDOWELL
The Associated PressISLAMABAD–A Pakistani lawmaker defended a decision by southwestern tribesmen to bury five women alive because they wanted to choose their own husbands, telling stunned members of Parliament this week to spare him their outrage.
“These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them,” Israr Ullah Zehri, who represents Baluchistan province, said Saturday. “Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”
The women, three of whom were teenagers, were first shot and then thrown into a ditch.
They were still breathing as their bodies were covered with rocks and mud, according media reports and human rights activists, who said their only “crime” was that they wished to marry men of their own choosing.
Zehri told a packed and flabbergasted Parliament on Friday that Baluch tribal traditions helped stop obscenity and then asked fellow lawmakers not to make a big fuss about it.
Many stood up in protest, saying the executions were “barbaric” and demanding that discussions continue Monday. But a handful said it was an internal matter of the deeply conservative province.
“I was shocked,” said lawmaker Nilofar Bakhtiar, who pushed for legislation calling for perpetrators of so-called honour killings to be punished when she served as minister of women’s affairs under the last government.
“I feel that we’ve gone back to the starting point again,” she said. “It’s really sad for me.”
The incident allegedly occurred one month ago in Baba Kot, a remote village in Jafferabad district, after the women decided to defy tribal elders and arrange marriages in a civil court, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission.
They were said to have been abducted at gunpoint by six men, forced into a vehicle and taken to a remote field, where they were beaten, shot and then buried alive, it said, accusing local authorities of trying to hush up the killings.
One of perpetrators was allegedly related to a top provincial official, it said.
I’m much too depressed by this to muster up the usual feminist analysis; besides, you all know the spiel anyway.
I am wondering this, though: is there any country on earth where the murder of men is legal? Any country where it’s legal for a bunch of regular Joes to murder some other regular Joes ’cause they don’t like how they dress or who their friends are?
16 Responses to “Five women buried alive in “honor” killings; Pakistani lawmaker unsure what the big deal is”
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Interrobang says:
It used to be perfectly legal for men to murder other men in the United States, assuming of course that the murderers in question had lighter skin than the murder victims…
(A tangential counterquestion, since you’re the expert on such things: Is there any culture anywhere that privileges darker skin over lighter?)
September 1st, 2008 at 3:20 am EST -
Tabby Lavalamp says:
I am wondering this, though: is there any country on earth where the murder of men is legal?
Iraq? http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....ailarticle
What gets me is that we think we’re the most evolved species on the planet. Not when we keep pulling crap like all of this.
There is good news though. “Many stood up in protest, saying the executions were ‘barbaric’ and demanding that discussions continue Monday.” At least there are many Pakistanis who were also deeply disturbed by this, and that’s what it’s going to take to change it. People of conscience from within.
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roofingbird says:
Hmm. Was this one of the lawyers that Musharraf had imprisoned, or was it one of his replacements?
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Briar says:
Of course there are countries where the killing of men is permitted. Just about every country that has capital punishment and maintains armed forces that it sends out as killers when its interests are threatened. We’re a brutal species and we use force to assert ourselves whenever we can get away with it. We write laws and invoke tribal and religious loyalties to help us do so. Self righteously, too – just yesterday I heard the some New Orleans official boast about how brutalising, violent and inhuman his prison was in an effort to threaten looters Americans seem to fear more than Gustav itself. As for that terrible incident – I was also heartened to hear the outrage of other Pakistanis at hearing this. The US has Alaska, Texas and other backwards provinces and social groups where primal instinct trumps rational enlightenment – Pakistan isn’t alone in being burdened by deeply conservative, reactionary fellow citizens who stubbornly resist any attempt to bring them into the present and vigorously assert their right to believe in nonsense and bully their children into conforming. Throwing stones in glasshouses is a risky self indulgence.
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Heart says:
Dr. Violet Socks, men are sometimes also killed in honor killings, so called — stoned, hanged, forced to take poison, etc. — usually because they have taken up with a woman who is being murdered in an honor killing. This is as legal as any honor killings are legal.
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slythwolf says:
Re: murdering men–the “gay panic” defense.
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Ciccina says:
I think that in our recent past you could kill a guy if he were gay, so long as you were on a sugar-high.
I think Briar’s example of our trash talk about rape in prison is a good example.
It seems a lot of us think inflicting rape and torture is okay so long as the subject has been convicted of some sort of crime. Given that the Pakistani murderers saw those women as guilty of a “crime,” I don’t think the two examples are that far apart.
Though I will raise an objection on behalf of Alaska – “backwards province”? I’m not sure what this means.
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Jennifer says:
To answer: No. There’s war, and illegal murders, but its only women who are marginalized and treated like cattle culturally. The stuff people are talking about above (the death penalty for crimes after trials??) is not even on the same level that you’re talking about, where women have no voice, no choice, and no one bats an eye about it. To compare this kind of routine brutality to the death penalty makes me sick because it marginalizes the horror for women who have to live in such cultures.
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Joanne says:
Please support the Asian Human Rights Commission’s appeal: http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2969/
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Briar says:
And, speaking of burying women alive, what about the so-called “liberal” blogs and their prurient and judgmental pursuit of Palin and her children? Well, now they can add the scalp of a 17 year old to their belts. Does that make them feel like real men?
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Tabby Lavalamp says:
And, speaking of burying women alive, what about the so-called “liberal” blogs and their prurient and judgmental pursuit of Palin and her children? Well, now they can add the scalp of a 17 year old to their belts.
I really hate the way they’re doing it, but her daughter’s pregnancy is validly used in one way – it helps show that abstinence only education doesn’t work. But that’s it. Unfortunately the misogynists went way past bringing up what’s valid the moment Palin’s name was announced.
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Violet says:
For heaven’s sake, people, I’m not talking about capital punishment or war. I’m talking about murder. Non-judicial, non-military homicide.
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Sis says:
What happened to your usual posters Vi? Someone’s nabbed them and left you with these jokers.
This really grits my teeth. How say we get together, you and me and four or so others (not these) and dispatch a rapist. No? Not allowed? A pedophile then? We won’t even make the judgment outselves. We’ll wait until some judge says the equivalent of it was done, yahshur but it’s an old sports custom, or she was precocious and he didn’t know she was 11.
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m Andrea says:
But Violet, that’s just the point. Men can’t tell the difference between punishment which accrues as the result of a crime, and punishment which accrues from being female. — that’s why they always bring up the death penalty and war as “equal” examples.
From a man’s perspective, what happens to a male in PRISION during WARTIME is the exact same thing as murder or rape of a female in her home during peacetime.
Now tell me men are fit to be called human. Because frankly I don’t think they’re that stupid not to figure this crap out on their own.
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Ciccina says:
Now Violet, seriously, there are quite a few places where you can kill a gay man just for his offenses against gender norms and not face any legal repercussions. As well as places where the legal system can convict and sentence a man for the crime of offending gender norms. And as was the case with the murder of Harvey Milk, where murder is treated as less-than-murder if the victim is a gay man. Gay men are men too, even if many people prefer to think of them, and treat them like, women. Honorary women, so to speak.
I’m going to go throw up now.
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Lee says:
“I am wondering this, though: is there any country on earth where the murder of men is legal?”
Yes. This is called “War”.
