Five Pakistanis die in suspected honour killing

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL185843.htm

MULTAN, Pakistan, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Five family members were murdered in a suspected honour killing in Pakistan on Tuesday, police said, shortly before a law took effect making such crimes a capital offence.

Gunmen broke into the home of Munnawar Mai and opened fire, killing Mai, her husband Mukhtar and their two-year-old son as well as the mother and a brother of Mukhtar, police said.

Mai and Mukhtar eloped and married in 2002, defying her parents wish that she wed a cousin. Mai's family was still angry over her marriage, police chief Mohammad Jamil said.

Hundreds of women are murdered each year in rural Pakistan for adultery, choosing partners without family permission or failing to fetch an adequate dowry.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/38f6756193f3177e511e377d25a3040f.htm

PAKISTAN: Activists sceptical about new law designed to reduce honour killings

ISLAMABAD, 5 January (IRIN) - Pakistani President General Musharraf on Tuesday gave his assent to a bill setting out enhanced punishment for honour crimes - usually carried out against women and girls who "offend the honour of the family". But women's rights activists are not convinced the law will have any impact on the widespread problem.

"It won't make any difference. It has just increased the punishment to 25 years in prison, but that remains discretionary," Sadia Mumtaz, coordinator of the Legislative Watch Programme (LWP) of the women's rights body, Aurat Foundation, told IRIN in the capital Islamabad.

"In most of honour-killing cases, the killer is from the same family, often an immediate blood relative, but with discretionary powers and the option of financial settlement with the guardian of the female murdered, this is like giving a licence to kill," Mumtaz said.

Musharraf had earlier called for a law banning honour killings "to lend more strength to Pakistan's efforts to do away with this intolerable practice", he said at the time.

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[Maat]

1. Anyone that could brutally murder like this is ..

a hollow shell of a human being. What little is left inside is eaten up by hatred. I don't care about his so-called values. If you had mentally healthy family members, they would let everyone live in peace, and just settle the matter. So sad. Just another reminder of how little value is assigned to women in this world (and children).

[sui generis]

2. quite frankly this is an outgrowth of their tribal traditions

what it means is this:

women convey property in the form of dowry to men. Marriages are arranged to conserve wealth and property and social standing. Sullying the bride or worse, eloping with a bride can potentially bring financial and social ruin to a family. Social ruin is nearly the same as financial ruin; your cousins and brothers will not find work or assistance or brides. The only way to divest themselves of "shame" is by an honor killing.

Women ARE property in Pakistan. Worse, like Afghanistan, nearly every rural area is the domain or fiefdom of a warlord or tribal leader preserving a community of kin and tribal commitments that revolve around property and family wealth and social standing, so the system perpetuates itself. Those tribal fiefdoms only pay lip service to national law, and most government "enforcers" either fear to tread in those territories or are themselves obligated under their own kinship and familial relations.

(***COOL, my first threadkill in weeks***)

[Igel]

3. Don't you just love honor-based tribal societies?

Most tribal societies, in general.

(I won't bother to compare this with other places or whine about importing such attitudes into non-tribal societies.)