Reply #24: “Honor Killings” Must be Stopped [View All]

[barb162]

Show you a Palestinian woman....? Here's a few but they are dead now

http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=7354&CategoryId=2

“Honor Killings” Must be Stopped
Date posted: May 03, 2005
By MIFTAH
In the past week, three horrific incidents took place in the Palestinian Territories, which included physical violence as well as “honor killings” against innocent Palestinian women. MIFTAH, as an organization dedicated to promoting the rule of law, public accountability and promotion of women’s civil and political rights, strongly condemns the recent targeting of women by their family members.

In east Jerusalem yesterday, Israeli police were informed by a father that his two daughters were found strangled to death in their homes in the Jabal Al Mukaber area. It is suspected that the two women were killed for the sake of upholding the family’s “honor.” This incident was not a unique occurrence; it was preceded by the beating to death of Faten Habash, a resident of Ramallah, by her father, in what is believed to be the result of repeated bashes to her head with an iron bar. Here too, the justification seems to be “honor killing,” it was reported that the incident happened when Faten Habash returned to her family house from hospital, where she had spent a period of time recovering from a broken pelvis and various other injuries resulting from an earlier beating by her father and other family members. The reason for this violence? Faten's insistence to marry a man of which her parents did not approve.

These two incidents should act as an eye opener to the Palestinian National Authority in particular and civil society at large, but also to those portions of Palestinian society that promote and advocate the inhumane and senseless policy of “honor killing” and haphazard violence against women.

Violence against women in the Arab world and for that matter in the developing world, is an in-house phenomenon, which means that such incidents happen on a daily basis with only a few incidents being reported on a very ad hoc basis. MIFTAH reiterates its call for these acts of violence against women to be addressed more prominently and with far more forceful measures than what is being done at the moment.

snip