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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 23rd,
2007 - Teen Stoning Sparks Anti-Honor-Killings Campaign |
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Teen Stoning Sparks
Anti-Honor-Killings Campaign The Media Line May 23, 2007 Women’s rights advocates,
social activists and human rights organizations are launching an
international campaign to stop the stoning to death of women in Kurdistan. The campaign was initiated
after pictures of a brutal stoning of a young girl in Kurdistan were
distributed on the Internet last month. Seventeen-year-old Du’a
Khalil Aswad of the Yazidi faith was stoned in a Kurdish town on April 7 for
liaising with a Muslim Arab man. Footage of the brutal
murder, taken with mobile phone cameras, shows dozens of men stripping her,
kicking her and throwing large concrete blocks on her head, while the
authorities do nothing to prevent her murder. “This is the reality of
those backward cultures still practiced in those areas and taking lives,”
said Diana Nammi, who represents the International Campaign Against Honor
Killings. An honor killing is the
phrase used to describe the practice of killing a woman on the grounds that
she has committed adultery or had a relationship with a man outside of
wedlock. The women are often murdered by members of their community or even
by their own families. Honor killings are practiced
in more than 54 countries, Nammi said, mostly in the Middle East and South
Asia, where there are large Muslim populations. Honor killings have
increased over the course of the last three decades, and have assumed what
Nammi called epidemic proportions. The recent stoning is a
particular brutal way of murder. Nammi said Aswad’s murder was ordered by the
community, not by her family, which makes this a “collective” form of honor
killing. Her stoning was not the
first case to be recorded in Iraq where the practice is illegal. In a separate case, a woman
was stoned in Kurdistan two years ago. “It’s like the dark ages
again,” Nammi said. After the Islamic Revolution
in Iran, the practice became a legal punishment against women committing
adultery. “By law they are stoning
women to death,” Nammi said. She added that stoning is
also practiced in other countries, including Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Campaigners say a crime of
this nature is new to Kurdistan, but it indicates that crimes against women
in Kurdistan are tolerated. The killers are still at large. They are calling on
Kurdistan’s regional government to bring the killers to justice and legislate
laws to protect women, so that this murder will not set a precedent for more
women to become victims. External link: http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=17761# |