Honor Crimes
Humaira Butt, 29, is alive and living in America but she's a wanted woman, marked for death after escaping Pakistan in 1999 with the man she loves.
"They didn't love me. They're very cruel people," she said.
Even before she was born, Butt's father had decided she would marry her first cousin. Correspondent Troy Roberts reports.
"I said he's a very bad guy. You know this. You're my parents. Do some mercy. They said no, no way," she said.
But when she refused and told her father she was in love with another man - Mahmood Butt - she endured unimaginable punishment.
The doctors at the hospital wrapped her entire body with a plaster cast, she said. It resembled what someone would wear with a broken a bone. It covered legs, arms and head and neck.
She was trapped in the body cast for two months.
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"They want me to have lesson," she said.
Her family administered a lesson to Mahmood Butt, too.
"Sixteen or 14 people were beating me like they were trying to kill me," he said.
Mahmood Butt still wears the scars.
"They have a knife and they have a sticks. I bleed a lot. I bleed a lot," he recalled.
After surviving three days of torture, Mahmood Butt escaped to the United States.
Humaira Butt was released from the body cast, but imprisoned in her own home.
She was locked in her bedroom at home for six years.
Solitary confinement is not the most severe punishment that could be doled out. In Pakistan and other locales, a woman perceived to be immoral can be killed to cleanse the family name. So-called honor crimes - marrying someone without approval, engaging in premarital sex or even being a victim of rape - are punishable by death.
While the government of Jordan doesn't sanction honor killings, the practice accounts for more than half of the women murdered in this country.
Protesters there have organized. Activists say that there is no justification for this in the Koran or the Islam religion. This old practice, perhaps a tribal tradition, dates back centuries. People who think it's sanctioned by their religion are wrong, actiists say.
In Jordan, where this issue of punishing honor crimes is openly discussed, many feel their country is being unfairly singled out for something that people are honest about acknowledging. Even the royalty there are trying to fight such practices and have made progress in raising awareness and changing old attitudes.
Sirhan Abdulla's 16-year-old sister Yasmine was a victim of rape. This brought unbearable shame to the family.
"We were in hell," recalled Abdulla. "It was like we were being turned on a spit. We were all like that. My father got diabetes from the stress. My mother got diabetes from the stress. It was all because of this problem."
As news spread through the community, Yasmine knew she faced certain death. With no safe place to go, police placed her into protective custody. And nearly a month later, she was released to her father. But only after he signed a written guarantee that no harm would come to her.
How soon after her release was Yasmine murdered, her brother was asked? "After 15 minutes I shot her," said brother Sirhan Abdulla, adding that he shot her four times in the head.
Abdulla served just six months for killing his sister Yasmine.
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| After his sister was raped, Sirhan Abdulla killed her to protect his family's honor. |
When asked if that was a fair sentence, Abdulla replied no. "I shouldn't have been in prison for a minute."
Added Abdulla: "If she had stayed alive, everyone in our family would have hung his head in shame."
In 2000, a bill was introduced in the Jordanian parliament that would toughen the punishment for honor crimes. It was soundly defeated.
"You have to put limits to the society," said parliament member Salameh Hiyari, who voted against the bill.
When asked by Troy Roberts if he believes the family values in his country are endangered by Western influences, Hiyari responded, "Yes, I do. We don't want to follow your steps in there."
But while the government does not sanction the practice, honor killers like Sirhan Abdulla still walk free.
And Abdulla said he doesn't think about his sister. "A girl is like a glass plate. Take a glass plate and throw it on the floor and it breaks. Would it be any use anymore or not? A girl is just like that. If she has been violated, she's finished."
And in Pakistan, Humaira believed that she was finished, locked in her room for years, separated from the man she loved. She decided that death was better than the lie she was living.
She attempted suicide three or four times.
Mahmood Butt, living in America, felt helpless. The couple kept their love alive through smuggled letters and secret phone calls.
"Every single minute or second, I thought I don't want her to die over there," he recalled.
After six years, the separation became unbeaerable. Mahmood Butt returned to Pakistan determined to marry Humaira regardless of the consequences. "Because you know, I cannot live without her," he said.
Risking everything he snuck into Humaira's house.
"That moment was a gorgeous moment," he recalled. "I'm in a dream. I was dreaming. She said...'Why do you come over here? If anybody sees you, they're going to kill us.' I said, 'I don't care about that. Now I see you. If I died, no problem, because I see you,'" he said.
They married secretly and plotted her escape. To gain more freedom, Humaira lied to her parents, telling them she was ready to marry her cousin.
Several months later, with every detail in place, Humaira left the house pretending to shop for a wedding dress. As planned, Mahmood Butt was waiting for her.
Humaira's father, a leading Pakistani politician, ordered police to launch a massive manhunt.
"They want to kill me. They mean it," she said.
"We were thinking any minute we will be (dead)," recalled Mahmood Butt.
Humaira's brother was designated as executioner.
Her own family sent him out to kill her, said Mahmood, "to recover their honor, honor killing."
After four months on the run, they escaped to America and were granted political asylum in 1999. But even now they remain in hiding.
"We are not safe. We are not safe," Mahmoood Butt declared.
They still live in fear of being killed.
With their new son, Humaira and Mahmood Butt are trying to build a future together, a future that was once forbidden.
"I got what I want. My husband. My baby and my sweet home. Now I am happy," Humaira Butt said amid tears.
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