Tuesday, May 27, 2014

HONOR KILLINGS- A PERSISTENT BARBARIAN PRACTICE IN PAKISTAN





Mohammad Iqbal sits next to his wife Farzana's body. He told reporters that they had been in love but her family did not agree with their marriage
A pregnant woman has been stoned to death by her own family in front of a Pakistani high court - for marrying the man she loved. Nearly 20 members of the woman's family, including her father and brothers, attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in broad daylight. Farzana Parveen, who was three months pregnant, was killed before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore, police have reported.

Police official Naseem Butt said the 25-year-old had married Mohammad Iqbal, with whom she had been engaged for years against the will of her family. Arranged marriages are considered normal among conservative Pakistanis, who view marriage for love as a transgression

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private organisation, said in a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in so-called honour killings in 2013.

But the Pakistani rights group, The  Aurat Foundation, has said the figure could be closer to a thousand and some estimate the true number could be higher still.Campaigners say few cases come to court, and those that do can take years to be heard. Even those that do result in a conviction may end with the killers walking free. Pakistani law allows a victim's family to forgive their killer.

But in honour killings, most of the time the women's killers are her family, said Wasim Wagha of the Aurat Foundation. The law allows them to nominate someone to do the murder, then forgive him.'This is a huge flaw in the law,' he said. 'We are really struggling on this issue.'

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