Honour killings are especially common in Middle East and Asian counties, the majority of women within these areas face enormous amounts pressure over honour, the whole concept of honour puts barriers up. Women are thought of as a collective and not an individual. It is a fact that men and women who have been brought up on the notion of honour do not thrive.
Since emigration from the east; the numbers of honour killings in the UK have grown. There is believed to be as many as 12 in the UK every year. In recent years, more and more cases have reached UK courts, however many crimes still remain unresolved or even undetected. Worldwide it is a much larger issue; The United Nations Population Fund estimates that the annual total of killings is over 5,000 women.
In the UK, murders have sometimes taken place after a family member has reacted excessively violent to their son or daughter taking on the trappings of western culture. Ram Gidoomal CBE of the South Asian Development adds: “Asian families who come to Britain are unprepared for the changed cultural environment. Young people have real problems trying to cope. Many of these youngsters live in two worlds”.
One example of this is a killing of a teenage girl who belonged to a Kurdish family in London. In 2002, Heshu Yones was brutally stabbed to death by her own father, Abdullah, simply because he disapproved of her western dress and Christian boyfriend. In this case, Mr Yones attempted suicide by cutting his throat then jumping from a third floor balcony. At his murder trial in 2003 he begged the judge to sentence him to death, but was instead sentenced to life imprisonment. Unlike that particular example, most family members will not feel any remorse for the shocking sin they have committed; they will carry on as normal and disguise the killings as suicide, fire or an accident.
You may think it naive of yourself to assume that such killings for such irrational and ridiculous reasons go on unnoticed in today’s “developed society”. Well, you’re certainly not the only one; honour killing is commonly considered to be a private matter of the affected families’ and is well covered up.
You may wonder what provokes a human being to perpetrate such a preposterous transgression: men who kill their wives, sisters or daughters argue that a life without honour is not worth living. It is said to be an ancient tribal custom and an allegation against a woman can be enough to defile a family’s honour and substantiate her murder.
You may speculate over what is being done to help these vulnerable women. To cut a long story short - not nearly enough. Although, in 2003, the Metropolitan Police set up a strategic task force to tackle the issue. A specialist unit was given the task of researching honour crimes and 100 murder files spanning the last decade. With no progress, the unit was dropped.
Mr Gidoomal has been campaigning on the issue since the early nineties. He claims that the authorities need to look further than just murder cases to get to the bottom of honour crimes. “Suicide, attempted murder and injuries can all fall into the category of honour killing”, he says.
Honour is acknowledged as a positive word. Clearly, calling a killing an “honour crime” is a contradiction of terms. Talking and discussing after an “honour crime” has happened is too little too late. You really have to unpack its true content if you really want to deal with an issue.
