Honour Killing = Horror Killing

The following article on 'Honour Killing' is quoted from my wife's webblog. I would like to share with you this article because most of us living in Hong Kong may not be aware that human rights and free will are too romote from women living in the tribal Islamic male-dominant world.


'I can't imagine that I am still terribly upset 16 hours after watching a programme on National Geographic channel last night about the plight of women in Pakistan and Lebanon. Cases of married and single women who got burnt half-dead or even got shot by their own families have been so common that people in the Middle East have taken it as something quite normal.

Quoted from www.gendercide.org/case_honour.html, the men say the wife didn't obey their orders, or was having relations with someone else. The police often say it is a domestic matter and refuse to pursue the case. Some judges even justify it and do not consider it murder." (Constable, "The Price of 'Honour.'") Such crimes are also rife in Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, where some 2,200 women are disfigured every year in acid attacks by jealous or estranged men. (Ellen Goodman, "How Long Before We Take the Honor out of Killing?," The Washington Post [in the Guardian Weekly, April 6-12, 2000.)

These women were killed for bringing "SHAME" to their families or fighting against family pressures. "SHAMEFUL ACTS" include: suspected adultery, pre-martial sex and refusal to marry in accordance with their family's choice. All these have something to do with the deprivation of free will to make choices and make decisions on their own.

The worst part of the programme was a disfigured pregnant married woman whose biological brother tried to get her a sponsored plastic surgery in the United States so that she could have a reconstructed nose for the half-cut nose(she still could smell, I guess), a pair of reengineered ears for the half-removed ears(she still could hear) and two eye balls(not real ones!) stuck into the two hollow holes. How terrifying it was!

Another story was how a female Pakistan who strived to fight for women's rights helped those abused and half-dead females. According to her, some families killed their daughters because they came back from the abusive husbands and decided to file a divorce. The families thought "the declaration of independence" had brought shame to the families. Another case was that a woman who was burnt nearly to death by her husband's family had been locked inside a room for four months without any treatment till the skin of the whole body turned to be watery dead meat. I covered my daughter's crying eyes immediately, yet she kept asking why and who did it. I told her the naughty and malicious men had done so.

In spite of being treated in a public hospital, the victim still longed for a "reunion" with the cold-blooded butcher and her husband once she has recovered. What an ignorant and uneducated woman she is! She is sort of human sacrifice on the altar in the modern world. How could that happen frequently in rural regions in the tribal Islamic male-dominant world? How lucky I am to have received higher education, to enjoy freedom of movement and freedom of speech here in Hong Kong!'