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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 14th,
2007 - In the Name of Honor |
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By Diana Mukkaled Asharq Alawsat May 14, 2007 Conventional media outlets
hardly covered the tragedy of the Iraqi girl named Dua Khalil Aswad. Dua's story is a significant
example of the many horrible incidents that take place around us that don't
necessarily become mainstream news. A quick search on the
Internet will yield video footage of Dua, a 17 year-old dark-haired Yazidi
Kurdish girl, being thrown to the ground by male members of her family and
local religious leaders, who then mercilessly, kick and stone her to death. The incident was captured on
a cell phone camera by one of many who gathered to kill her. Some threw stones, while
others filmed the tragic incident. The scene looked too violent
and confusing to be comprehended. I wonder what went through
the minds of those that filmed Dua as she surrendered to her cruel murderers
without the slightest bit of resistance. Could they have discouraged
her murderers? It is her murderers who
shared the footage of her stoning from cell phone to cell phone until it made
its way to the internet making it an issue. Various circumstances
surrounded Dua's ordeal. The Yazidi girl eloped with
a Muslim boy after converting, which enraged her family and relatives. Her
family persuaded her to return home convincing her that she had been
forgiven. The girl was then ambushed on her way home by a group of up to 1000
men who were waiting for her. She was then brutally killed. In response to the murder,
acts of reprisal took place against her Yazidi denomination, most prominently
was the killing of 23 Yazidi workers by fundamentalist gunmen near Mosul. After that, fundamentalist
websites posted pictures of the slain Yazidis with captions encouraging
revenge against the so-called "devil-worshippers". The websites
also praised Dua's faith, assuming that she was killed because of her
conversion to Islam. The fundamentalist even
claimed that the Yazidi girl can bee seen rising her forefinger to denote the
pronunciation of the Shahada [the testimony of faith] before her death. Images of the girl's murder
were the exact catalyst needed to fuel the frantic sectarian sentiments. Dua's murder went from being
a horrible tribal crime into an issue of religious dispute. Websites of both
Yazidi and fundamentalist Kurds have become a cyber space battle zone. But let us return to our
main issue - Dua's tragedy. Dua is among the dozens of
women killed in Iraqi Kurdistan in the name of "honor" using the
most horrifying methods including being burned alive. This is an act of
mass-murder that has become a frequent occurrence against many females, which
is well documented. Some regard the practice of
honor killings as a ritual that paves way to manhood by reaffirming the
tribe's masculine identity at the expense of a life, in this case Dua's. Nobody tried to help Dua or
alleviate her pain, but as she was being stoned and kicked, a man came and
threw a jacket over the lower half of her body to cover her legs. For them,
it is not shameful to cruelly kill a young girl, but it is shameful if her legs
are revealed while she suffers unbearable agony. External link: http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=8956 |