Honour Killings- shame the mosters

Published: 09/01/2007

Honour Killings

Shafilea Ahmed ( 17) , disappeared from her Cheshire home in 2003, after a trip to Pakistan where she was made to meet a chosen husband. Her response to this family pressure was to drink bleach and write defiant poems. She had told people about her domestic abuse. Soon afterwards she was found dead in some undergrowth. Her family was suspected of murder, a charge they deny. An inquest into her death has just started. Pictures of her parents show them to be extraordinarily calmly under the circumstances. This could be yet one more unproven ‘honour killing’. On BBC2 this week, two documentaries reveal the rise in such killings and cases of appalling sadism meted out on girls and women by their loved ones. It is all done in the name of ‘izzat’ ( honour) which is felt to be violated if females refuse to obey like trained dogs.

I have written about these crimes for over two decades and have known victims of the cruel oppression within a minority of British Asian and Arab families. Things can only get better promised New Labour in 1997. Cultural violence against women has got shockingly worse, partly because each new generation of girls gets that much more removed from eastern values and more fiercely independent. Police, teachers and social workers would vouch for that. Even more depressingly younger women do not, any more, come out collectively against the outrage.

Those were the days when a dowry death or the killing of a wife, sister or daughter got Asian women so livid that we would picket the homes of the venal killers with placards, jeering the men and the women who supported izzat punishments. Their bloody laundry was held up and for communal people, that was death in life. We were not victims ourselves, but expressed rage on behalf of those who couldn’t. Proud and true feminists, we were undeterred by threats from the families and their thugs.

Most young Asian and Arab women today probably think feminism is a brand new, extra slim tampon. The sharp and bright join think tanks and offices and wouldn’t be seen dead picketing. We have also seen the rise of apologist women’s groups- particularly ‘Islamic’ female activism- which idolises cultural and religious values, however heinous. And organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain which keep to traditional lines and never protect the rights of females.

It really is time for Asian and Arab women who have a voice and conscience to take direct action, name and shame murderous families and communities. And yes I would join them, with my old placard, still in the shed, last used in 1984.

Published in Evening Standard