Honour killing — Why a pregnant woman was stoned to death
It sounded to me like a myth when I first heard it. It certainly was not a reference to an occurrence in any of the ancient towns in the Roman Empire or Asia Minor during the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys as recorded in the New Testament.
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The story, as I read it, happened just last week in modern Asia. A 25-year-old pregnant woman was stoned to death by members of her own family. Ironically, the murder occurred nowhere else but outside a place where one is supposed to go and seek justice — a courthouse. Reportedly, there was police presence too.
The atrocious murder took place in broad daylight last Tuesday, not in a hamlet, but in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan.
Honour killing
According to the story which was published on Yahoo News on Wednesday, May 28, the woman’s only crime was marrying a man she loved but not approved of by her family.
She was pelted with stones and pieces of bricks by her own father, brothers and other relatives, altogether numbering about two score, for marrying against her family’s wishes. Honour killing, they call it. They are reported to have waited outside the city’s building that houses the High Court of Lahore.
According to the father of the pregnant woman, he killed his daughter because she had “insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent.” The father apparently had filed an abduction case against his daughter’s husband, and the couple were contesting that in court. The day the pregnant relative was murdered was the day she was on her way to the court to testify in defence of her husband.
The husband alleged that he was in love with his wife but the woman’s family wanted to fleece money from him before marrying her off. He had refused to pay the huge dowry that the family was asking for. Instead, he went with the woman to have the marriage registered in court. The family, thus, got infuriated, hence the attack.
The woman’s father is said to have reported to the police after the murder, saying, “I took my daughter’s life as an honour killing”. What is decent, fair and good about such an atrocious killing in a public place? The woman’s body was handed over by the police to her husband for burial.
Pakistani Human Rights Commission
According to the Yahoo report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private group, has said some 869 women were murdered in 2013 to defend family “honour”.
The bizarre murder of the 25-year-old pregnant Pakistani woman by her own family members draws critical attention to the unpardonable brutalities, violence and discriminations that women the world over continue to suffer; our own country, Ghana, not excepted.
Family expectation
What should families look for in giving their full assent to the marriage of their daughters? Is it not love? Is it not cohesiveness and adaptability? Is it not for the happiness of their daughters? I do not have a daughter but certainly, the future happiness of my daughter would have been of prime importance to me when it came to giving her away in marriage.
Obnoxious culture
In the name of obnoxious and intolerable customs and culture in this advanced technological era where the sex of a baby is known even before it is born and co-habitation is fast becoming an acceptable arrangement between couples without necessarily going through outmoded norms, some families are still bent on arranging for their daughters to get married to men of the family’s preference and, sometimes, choice.
These are sometimes men the women have not courted; men they do not know and whom they do not fancy as their life partners. Sometimes, the men in the arranged marriages are even twice or three times the age of the women.
In the name of old customs which serve no purpose, families are virtually “selling” off their daughters into marriage by demanding ridiculous dowries. Obviously, for the parents who insist on outmoded customs which are of no consequence in today’s life, the long-term happiness of their daughters in such marriages cannot be of prime concern.
Moderning culture
How do we modernise some of these customs in order to preserve the interest of young women going into marriages?
We have often heard the local and international human rights activists reacting bitterly in cases of atrocities against women but their condemnations do not seem to bite deep into the flesh of perpetrators. Otherwise, why do such impunities continue at alarming magnitudes?
Keeping certain aspects of our culture is good. However, the culture that dehumanises others and constantly injures innocent women even to the point of murder is unacceptable. It has no room in modern development. Such dehumanising cultures draw us back into the dark ages. Should we turn to the church, to traditional authorities or to Parliament for redress?
