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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 17th,
2007 - The Girl who was Stoned to Death for Falling in Love |
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The Girl who was Stoned to Death
for Falling in Love By Natalie Clarke Daily Mail May 17, 2007 A teenage girl lies dead on
the ground in a pool of her own blood. Her once groomed hair is
cast across her face like a rag doll's, her skirt pulled up to complete her
humiliation. In another image, she is
seen lying on her side, her face battered and bloodied, barely recognisable. The concrete block used to
smash in her face lies next to her. Du'a Khalil Aswad was
beaten, kicked and stoned for 30 minutes at the hands of a lynch mob before
one of her attackers launched a carefully aimed fatal blow. The murder was carried out
in public, watched by hundreds of men cheering and yelling. Du'a's crime? To
fall in love with a Sunni boy. Her family practised the Yezidi religion. The Sunnis and Yezidis hate
each other. When Du'a ran away with her Sunni boyfriend, a sentence of death
was passed on her. This act of medieval
savagery took place last month in a town in northern Iraq, in the fledgling
'democracy' created by Bush and Blair when they invaded the country in 2003
and 'freed' its people. The sickening scenes, which
defy belief in every sense, were captured by some of the observers and participants
who thought it would be proper to record these harrowing events as some sort
of memento. Perhaps they thought it
would serve as a warning to other young people who dared to follow their
hearts - not the strictures of a religion which will not brook dissent - and
punishes adolescent impetuosity with the most brutal of public murders. The killing was filmed on a
number of mobile phones. The images were then - all too predictably - posted
on the internet. The Mail takes no pleasure
in publishing these pictures. But we believe our readers should witness the
depths of the depravity still being carried out in the 21st century in the
name of 'honour'. Perhaps, then, something can
be done to prevent it happening again. Of course, anyone who takes
even a passing interest in news is all too aware of the tragedy that has
engulfed the people of Iraq: the daily bombings, murders and kidnappings. The subjugation of its
women, however, has been largely ignored. Yet according to cultural
observers, the number of so-called 'honour killings' has increased in Iraq
since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Campaigners say there is an
'epidemic' of such killings in the wartorn country. Autopsy reports in
Baghdad often conclude with the verdict: "Killed to wash away her disgrace." The filming of Du'a's death
was just one more macabre element of her killing, but it has achieved
something those bloodthirsty amateur filmmakers could not have predicted: it
has brought such practices into the open and exposed them to the wider world. It is, of course, too late
for Du'a, a strikingly pretty young girl with long auburn hair. The
17-year-old must have hoped that the 'liberation' of her country would afford
her opportunities she might otherwise never have had - for her education and
a life of happiness free from oppression. She lived with her family in
the town of Bashika, near Mosul. They were neither rich nor poor. It is believed Du'a met her
Sunni boyfriend - whose name is not known - several months ago. They had
grown up in an environment where hatred against rival factions is the norm. The Yezidis - a Gnostic sect
which combines Islamic teachings with Persian religions - despise the Sunnis;
the Sunnis loathe the Yezidis. Du'a and her boyfriend would
have been all too aware that theirs was a forbidden love. But like so many
teenagers before them, right back to the illicit love of Romeo and Juliet,
they couldn't help themselves. For a while, they met in
secret. It was during one such highly charged meeting that they came up with
a plan to run away together. It is not clear whether this
desperate measure was a result of their having sought and been refused
permission to marry, or if they decided to do it knowing that such permission
would never be obtained. "Her family would never
have agreed to such a marriage," says Diana Nammi, a leading Kurdish
women's rights campaigner. Some Muslim groups have
claimed that Du'a converted to Islam shortly before her murder. According to
other reports, her boyfriend denies this. They ran away together to an
address in Bashika. The girl's family alerted the police and Du'a and her
boyfriend were found just a few days later. According to Ms Nammi, who
is calling for the girl's killers to be brought to justice, Du'a was arrested
and put into prison. A few days later, the police
apparently received assurances from the leader of her tribe - who Ms Nammi
believes is Du'a's uncle - that the girl would not be harmed. What happened next is the
subject of conflicting reports. According to some, the house of the tribal
leader was stormed by a mob and Du'a dragged out and killed. Ms Nammi, however, says she
has information that it was the tribal leader who betrayed his niece to the
mob. In this man's eyes, Du'a had committed an unforgiveable crime, punishable
by death. The family's 'honour' had
been besmirched. The moment Du'a was placed in his house, her fate was
sealed. On April 7, Du'a was brought
out of the house in a headlock to face the lynch mob. Hundreds of men were
waiting for her - the excited atmosphere is said to have resembled a large
sporting event - but no women. On the video, Du'a's screams
can be heard as she is dragged to the ground. In a further humiliation, her
lower body has been stripped. Instinctively, Du'a tries to
cover herself; only later was a piece of clothing thrown over her. She is surrounded by an
enormous crowd jockeying for a good view of the ritualistic killing. About
nine men take part in the attack, including, it is thought, members of the
girl's family. To any father of a daughter,
that a helpless girl should be set upon with such cowardly savagery is beyond
comprehension. One can barely imagine her terror. It is a profoundly
disturbing spectacle. One man kicks her hard between the legs as she screams
in agony. Du'a tries to lift herself up, but someone hurls a concrete block
into her face. Another man stamps on her
face. Someone kicks her in the stomach. Police officers stand idly by, some
of them apparently enjoying the spectacle as much as anyone else. Meanwhile, some observers
film the execution on their mobile phones - the modern world intruding on a
spectacle that belongs more in the Roman arena than in an apparently
civilised society. After half an hour of this
savagery, Du'a is finally - mercifully, perhaps - dead. In a final
humiliation, a man tries to lift her up, but drops her again, and her
bloodied body is rolled face down into a puddle of blood. The family has had
its 'honour' restored. According to Ms Nammi,
Du'a's parents did not want her to be stoned, though it is not clear whether
they might have agreed for her to be killed in some other way. After her murder, according
to Ms Nammi, two men were arrested by Iraqi police, but she has heard they
were subsequently released without charge. Reports suggest that two of
Du'a's uncles and four other people fled the town as investigators began to
search for the culprits. It is thought these included her brother, who
appeared in the video of the murder. As for Du'a's boyfriend -
who has lost the girl he loved in the most awful circumstances imaginable -
he went into hiding for a while, but it is believed that no action has been
taken against him. Du'a was buried in a simple
unmarked grave. Later, says Ms Nammi, her body was exhumed by the Kurdish
authorities, who have autonomous control of the region, and sent to the
Medico-legal Institute in Mosul. There her body was examined
to find out whether she had been a virgin or not, before being returned to
the Sheikh Shams cemetery. To our Western eyes, this
posthumous assault on Du'a's body is the final insult. But according to Ms
Nammi, it did at least establish that she was still a virgin and innocent of
the 'crime' of which she had been accused. However, Ms Nammi believes
the mere fact that Du'a had run off with a Sunni boy would have been enough
to have her sentenced to death. Meanwhile, the cycle of
tit-for-tat murders continues in Iraq. In this instance, in an apparent act
of retaliation for Du'a's murder, 23 Yezidi workers were attacked and killed
two weeks later, apparently by members of an armed Sunni group. The men were travelling on a
bus between Mosul and Bashika when their vehicle was halted by the gunmen,
who made them disembark before killing them. Tomorrow evening, Ms Nammi,
founding member of the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, will
lead a group of women meeting in Shoreditch, East London, to remember Du'a
Khalil Aswad and give back to her the dignity torn from her by her violent
death. The women are pledged to
campaign against the entrenched beliefs which lead to such senseless deaths -
and the fact that the people who commit these crimes are not regarded as
murderers, but as heroes of the community. According to Ms Nammi, there
have been an estimated 10,000 cases of honour killings in the Kurdistan
region in the past decade. Under Iraqi law, the
punishment for anyone found guilty of an honour killing is just six months in
prison. "Something has to be
done to stop this," says Ms Nammi, who came to Britain in 1996.
"There is an epidemic of so-called honour killings. It is almost routine
and utterly unacceptable. "We would greatly
appreciate any contribution from the British Government in preventing these
murders of women in Iraq." Ms Nammi has the support of
Amnesty International. "This young girl's
murder is truly abhorrent and her killers must be brought to justice,"
says Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK Director. "Unless the authorities
respond vigorously to this and other reports of crimes in the name of
"honour", we must fear for the future of the women in Iraq." For the sake of 17-year-old
Du'a, an innocent girl who simply fell in love with the wrong man, it is all
too little, too late. External link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=455400&in_page_id=1879 By Yifat Susskind Counterpunch May 17, 2007 Recently, a mob of frenzied
men beat and stoned to death a 17-year-old girl, Du'a Khalil Aswad, in
northern Iraq. She was murdered by relatives and neighbors for falling in
love with someone that her community did not approve of, in what's typically
called an "honor killing." Her murder has received a fair amount of
media coverage, not because "honor killings" are an anomaly in
today's Iraq, but because this particular attack was videotaped and released
on the Internet. Throughout Iraq, and
elsewhere, attacks like Du'a's brutal murder are used to punish women who
make autonomous decisions about issues such as marriage, divorce, and whether
and with whom to have sex. In the US, most people think that this brutality
is exactly the kind of thing that the US "democratization" of Iraq
was meant to stop. In fact, the opposite is true. Since the US invasion,
"honor killings" have been on the rise across Iraq, due in large
part to measures enacted by the US. The US has empowered
Islamist political parties whose clerics promote "honor killing" as
a religious duty. As Iraqi women's rights advocate Yanar Mohammed explained,
"Once the religious parties came to power, Iraqi men began hearing in
the mosques that it was their duty to protect the honor of their families by
any means. It is understood that this entails killing women who break the
rules." Women who are raped by men outside of their family are
considered to have shamed their families. Consequently, the overall rise in
rape and kidnapping under US occupation has elicited a rash of "honor
killings." In October 2004, Iraq's Ministry of Women's Affairs revealed
that more than half of the 400 rapes reported since the US invasion resulted
in the murder of rape survivors by their families. The US also destroyed the
Iraqi state, including much of the judicial system, leaving people more
reliant on conservative tribal authorities to settle disputes and on
unofficial "religious courts" to mete out sentencing, including
"honor killings." At the same time, however, while the US saw fit
to violate international law by eradicating most of Iraq's legal system, it
maintained Article 130 of the penal code, which provides vastly reduced
sentences for "honor killings" (as little as six months, as opposed
to life imprisonment, which is the minimum sentence for murder). Although the US is
obligated, as the occupying power, to protect Iraqis' human rights, including
the prevention and prosecution of "honor killing," it has not done
so. Official negligence promotes "honor killing" because
perpetrators are confident that they will not be prosecuted. What is “Honor Killing”? "Honor killings"
are usually murders committed by men acting to restore "family
honor" tarnished by a woman's "immoral" behavior. "Honor
killings" resemble so-called "crimes of passion" in US,
European, and Latin American jurisprudence, in that sentencing is not based
on the crime, but on the feelings of the perpetrator. For example, in 1999, a
Texas judge sentenced a man to four months in prison for murdering his wife
and wounding her lover in front of their 10-year-old child. As in an
"honor killing," adultery was viewed as a mitigating factor in the
case. But while individualistic societies, such as the US, tend to locate honor
in the individual, communities that suffer "honor killings" vest
honor in the family, tribe, or clan. "Honor killings" are therefore
often reluctantly condoned as necessary for the greater good of the
community-sometimes even by those who are grief-stricken by the woman's
death. In the ethical and legal framework that condones "honor
killings," there is an inversion of the relationship between perpetrator
and victim as understood in most formal legal systems. The woman who is
killed (along with anyone who tries to defend her) is considered the guilty
party because she has tarnished the honor of her family. In contrast, her
killer, who is the dishonored party, is seen as the victim. The Culture Card: Religion as an Excuse for Violence against Women Despite the many ways that
US policies have contributed to the increase in "honor killing" in
Iraq, most people in the US continue to view these crimes as an invariable
part of Iraqi, Arab, or Muslim "culture." For instance, US
journalist Kay Hymowitz defines "honor killing" as part of the
"inventory of brutality" committed by men against women in the
"Muslim world," railing against "the savage fundamentalist Muslim
oppression of women." Hymowitz echoes a commonly
held assumption, namely that gender-based violence in the Middle East derives
from Islam. In fact, "honor killings" are not condoned by any
Islamic texts, but are rooted in customary law that pre-dates Islam and
Christianity. Identifying Islam or "Muslim culture" as the source
of violence against women serves to dehumanize Muslims and justify violence
against them. It also deflects attention from factors (such as politics,
economics, and militarism) that influence the prevalence of gender-based
violence, and obscures the ways that US actions have exacerbated conditions
that give rise to violence against women. In fact, culture alone
explains very little. Like all human behavior, "honor killing" does
have a cultural dimension, but like culture itself, "honor killing"
is shaped by social factors such as poverty and women's status that change - and
can be changed - in ways that can either help combat or promote "honor
killing." For instance, poverty-inducing economic policies, such as the
2003 US decision to fire all public-sector workers in Iraq (40 percent of
whom were women), have contributed to the rise in "honor killings."
Increased poverty has made people more dependent on tribal structures for
jobs, housing, and other scarce resources and compelled more women into
polygamous, forced, and abusive marriages, where they are at greater risk of
"honor killing." Therefore, culture is a
context, but not a cause or a useful explanation for violence, in Iraq or
anywhere else. It makes much more sense to examine gender, a system of power
relations whose number-one enforcement mechanism is the threat of violence
against women. There is nothing "Muslim" about that system, except
that its Muslim proponents, like their Jewish, Christian, and Hindu
counterparts, use religion to rationalize women's subjugation. In Iraq, those
championing "honor killing" as a means of social control and moral
policing are the ones that the Bush Administration has propelled to power. Confronting “Honor Killings” in Iraq: Iraqi Women Activists Next time you hear Bush
praising the founding fathers of the new, democratic Iraq, think of Du'a
Aswad. Think of Iraqi women activists such as members of the Organization for
Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) who are standing against "honor
killing," aiding potential victims, and working for a secular, truly
democratic government in Iraq. In partnership with MADRE, an international
women's human rights organization, OWFI has created the Underground Railroad
for Iraqi Women, which, inspired by the network of courageous individuals who
operated the Underground Railroad during slavery in the US, seeks to provide
women threatened with "honor killing" with the means and resources
to escape and begin to build a new life. Members of OWFI have also initiated
a campaign calling on the Iraqi Kurdistan government to hold the perpetrators
accountable for Du'a's murder, and establish and enforce laws that
criminalize the "terror[ization], murder, and oppression of women.” Remember Du'a, the countless
women she represents, and Iraqi women activists like those of OWFI - who, in
the face of death threats and ongoing intimidation, are bravely confronting
an epidemic of gender-based violence fueled by US policies - and work to hold
the Bush Administration directly responsible for the daily terror and erosion
of women's rights with which Iraqi women are now forced to contend. Yifat Susskind is
communications director of MADRE, an international women's human rights
organization. She is the author of a book on US foreign policy and women's
human rights and a report on US culpability for violence against women in
Iraq, both forthcoming. External link: http://www.counterpunch.org/susskind05172007.html |