Pakistani lawmakers crack down on "honor" killers
ISLAMABAD Pakistani lawmakers have passed a law that stiffens the penalty for convicted “honor” killers and closes a loophole that often allowed them to go free.
The bill was passed Thursday after a raucous debate that lasted nearly four hours. The law gives a mandatory 25 years in prison to anyone convicted of killing in the name of honor and no longer allows family members to forgive the killers.
More than 1,000 women were killed last year in so-called honor killings in Pakistan, often by fathers, brothers or husbands, prompted by acts as innocent as a woman marrying the man of her own choice or being seen sitting with a man. Killers were rarely punished because of the forgiveness provision. Human rights activists have been battling for years for tighter laws.
For generations now in Pakistan, they’ve called it “honor” killing, carried out in the name of a family’s reputation.
In a recent case that came to light, Mubeen Rajhu discovered that his sister had defied the family and married a Christian man. For six days he paced. His rage grew. On the seventh day, he retrieved the pistol from where he had hidden it and walked up to his sister and with one bullet to the head, he killed her.
The killers routinely invoke Islam, but rarely can they cite anything other than their belief that Islam doesn’t allow the mixing of sexes. Even Pakistan’s hard-line Islamic Ideology Council, which is hardly known for speaking out to protect women, says the practice defies Islamic tenets.
It doesn’t matter: in slums and far-off villages, away from the cosmopolitan city centers, people live in a world where religion is inextricably tied to culture and tradition, where tribal councils can order women publicly punished, and a family can decide to kill one of its own, even to avenge a wrongdoing committed by someone else.
In the vast majority of cases, the “honor” killer is a man and the victim is a woman.
She is a sister who falls in love with a man not of her family’s choosing. She is a daughter who refuses to agree to an arranged marriage, sometimes to a man old enough to be her father. She is a wife who can no longer stay in an abusive marriage and divorces her husband.
