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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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May 24th,
2007 - Path to Liberty a Deadly Descent |
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Path to Liberty a Deadly Descent By Paul Kent The Daily Telegraph May 24, 2007 A young love, two ancient
religions ... a woman dying in a pool of her own blood after a very public
stoning. This is the modern Iraq, for
which we sent our troops to fight. This is the freedom that
exists ... and the reminder of how much more work there is still to be done. For some, such as Du'a
Khalil Aswad, this was the price of the so-called new freedom. Of course, whether Du'a
believed in the new freedom promised by the coalition forces will never be
known. All that we do know is that
Du'a, young and in love, tested its limits only to see her new world come up
terrifyingly, tragically, short. Her crime was to fall in
love with a Sunni boy when her family practised the Yezidi religion, which
does not allow marriage outside her faith. The difference between her
murder and the many other "honour" killings that also take place
was that Du'a's death was captured by camera phone and sent around the world
via the internet. Never has the old world and
new world come together more savagely. A simple Google search will
find the vision on any number of websites but it must come with a warning. This is no Hollywood
production. A woman dies before your eyes. The blurred vision shows a
crazed mob, jostling and crowing and jockeying for position, the cameraman
struggling past the thousand-odd men who waited for Du'a to be dragged from
the house of a tribal leader in a headlock so they could begin the killing. More than anything the men
are excited, which is as sickening to write as it is to accept. In the mad scramble the
cameraman finally gets close to Du'a, by which time she is already on the
ground, her body sagging and struggling to stay strong. Stones rain down on her. Her
screams can be heard. One stone, the size of a
good Bessa brick, is catapulted with full force into her body. As she tries to protect
herself Du'a's hair is matted and strewn across her face. Again she screams. To complete the shame
somebody has ripped off her skirt, another man kicks her in the crotch. For 30 minutes this goes on,
until finally a stone knocks her unconscious and a deep, dark blood begins to
run across the earth. Du'a is dead. This young woman, just 17
years old and whose crime was to fall in love, is now lost from this world
forever. If this is upsetting, then
apologies. But this is the reality of our world, far from political spin, far
from the lies of this "peaceful religion" we are force fed whenever
racial tensions rise up. It is abhorrent at every
level. It must be stopped. Du'a and her boyfriend,
whose identity is still not known, had a plan to run away together. Clearly aware that theirs
was a forbidden love, it is uncertain whether their plan to elope was a
result of having asked permission to marry and been denied or whether they
planned it anyway, knowing how the answer would fall. Regardless, they fled to
Bashika but were betrayed by Du'a's family, whose "honour" had been
besmirched. They needed to cleanse the
family and could do so only with Du'a's death. Her parents did not want her
to be stoned but, according to Diana Nammi, a leading Kurdish rights
campaigner who fled to England, it is not certain whether they agreed to
another form of death. What is certain is that
rather than a one-off, or a fading remnant of an old world that is thankfully
disappearing, "honour" killings are on the rise in Iraq. Nobody knows exact figures
because exact figures are at best uncertain, at most shady, when it comes to
happenings in Iraq. But campaigners such as Ms
Nammi say there is an "epidemic". The evidence is in the growing
number of autopsy reports in Baghdad signed off with a simple verdict:
"Killed to wash away her disgrace." After Du'a's murder two men
were arrested by Iraqi police but, according to Ms Nammi, were later quietly
released. Then last Saturday, 42 days
after Du'a's murder, Iraqi authorities arrested four men in relation to the
killing. On the surface, at least,
the arrests have been applauded. "They (the crowd)
brutally killed a young Yazidi girl in pursuit of out-of-date tribal
rites," Tahsin Saeed Ali, the Yazidi religious leader known as the emir
of the Yazidis in Iraq, said. Is this a hope? Is this a
sign of change, that maybe the coalition is making some headway, or merely a
false dawn? It is difficult to get too
excited. The death came to light only after the image was released on the
internet, after all, when the rest of the world had begun to vent its
outrage. It forced the authorities to act. Elsewhere the rise in
"honour" killings suggests a descent into localised law, indicating
it is getting worse rather than better. Maybe it has to before things are
finally righted, which gives no comfort. External link: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21781897-5001031,00.html |