Honour Killings !

[PARAMASHIVAN]

[tscii:7dcf86c541]Is this happening in ‘Our’ society still? I hear these kinds of manslaughters are ‘common’ in Pakistan! In the eyes of the ‘law’ this is ‘Man slaughter’!

Pakistan has been the worst culprit of such ‘illicit’ act. These killings target women and men who choose to have relationships outside of their family's tribal affiliation and or religious communities within Pakistan.

Why isn't the 'Judicial law' doing much to prevent such Evil ??

Your views on these please
[/tscii:7dcf86c541]

[sathya_1979]

it is prevelant in many countries, not only in India , Pak and south asia. reason-caste, status, religion etc etc

[PARAMASHIVAN]

it is prevelant in many countries, not only in India , Pak and south asia. reason-caste, status, religion etc etc

yes, but Death rates of Honour killings in pakistan is far high..

though I have never heard of such case in Sri Lanka :roll:

[NOV]

I think this is very much limited to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Northern India.

Havent heard of this elsewhere, unless its done by migrants of the above countries, overseas.

[PARAMASHIVAN]

I think this is very much limited to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Northern India.

Havent heard of this elsewhere, unless its done by migrants of the above countries, overseas.

Yes Lots of Pakistani cases here in UK, they take their daughters (who are born in UK) to pakistan , saying they are going to see their relatives, grandparents etc etc and murder them there :evil:

Such mental lunatics :sigh2:

[PARAMASHIVAN]

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Killing for 'honour'
Soutik Biswas | 04:31 UK time, Wednesday, 23 June 2010

You can get killed for falling in love in many parts of India. Especially, if you or your lover - and sometimes, spouse - "defy" the preordained rules of the country's fiendishly complex caste system. You can invoke the ire of your family and community and get killed if you marry within your caste, outside your caste, within your sub-caste and so on. You can also get killed for marrying outside your religion.

For many years, urban Indians believed such "honour killings" only happened in remote rural areas, mainly in the northern states of Haryana, Punjab and parts of Uttar Pradesh. Now, they are being reported from the capital Delhi - two couples and a girl in the past week alone. At least 26 others have been killed in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh in the past 18 months. In neighbouring Punjab, one of India's most prosperous states, police records talk about 34 "honour killings" during the past two and half years - that's one killing a month. The police admit that many more killings may go unreported.

Sociologists say the rising number of such killings point to a collision between the old and young, the conservatives and the liberals, between old India, residing in its villages, and new India, thriving in its cities. They say as India becomes more urbanised, young men and women flock to its crowded cities, looking for work and love, far away from the watchful eyes of their elders and communities. They go to work, and often, fall in love, and invite retribution from their families.

So, very often, such freedom is short lived, as the boys and girls are duped into "meetings" by their families and relatives only to end up being killed brutally. The majority of the murders, police say, are carried out by the girl's family - the family's "honour", the families say, is at stake when their daughters get involved with lower caste men. The killers and their kin are frighteningly unrepentant about murdering their own. "I have no regrets," the uncle of one of the girls whom he allegedly killed recently told journalists, "I will punish them all over again if given another chance."

So what about the myth about that "honour killings" happen only in villages? In this age of globalisation, India lives with one foot in the villages, and the other in cities. Urbanisation is incomplete; there is a lot of urban-rural overlap. Entire families do not migrate to cities, and links with villages remain strong. So although there is more freedom for youngsters to work and mingle in cities, if they end up chosing partners of a lower caste, their elders and communities who live in villages can easily object. "It is a ressertion of community control over those individuals and families on which elements of democracy, capitalism and globalised economy have encroached," says Prem Chowdhry, a scholar who has investigated such killings for decades.

"Honour killings" are not merely about caste. Sociologists believe it's also about sections of the society that are intensely anti-women. In Haryana - the state with possibly the highest number of cases - more women have begun working. Expansion of women in the workforce between 1981 and 1991 was 63%; the increase of men in the workforce during the same period was 26%. Educated women, many village collective heads tell privately, are a "menace".

There are also some baffling double standards. How else can one explain the fact that men in Haryana routinely "purchase" women for marriage from other, lower castes - and even religion - from other parts of the country because there are too few marriageable girls available in their villages?

India has ignored "honour killings" - a lawyer recently called a "national scandal" - for too long. It has denied that they have happened, pointing to its neighbour, Pakistan, as the place where they are prevalent. Human rights groups across the border have generated enough noise and forced their rulers to introduce laws to stop honour killings. In comparison, an Indian representative at a United Nations committee in 2000 actually denied reports of "honour killings" of women.

A spate of killings in the ruling Congress party-led state of Haryana - where traditional village collectives have been actually found to order such killings - and now in Delhi has prompted the country's Supreme Court to ask the government what it is doing to prevent them.

It's good that India has finally woken up to this reprehensible crime. The courts are asking the governments to protect couples who defy tradition. There are reports of an impending law against such killings, like in Pakistan. But citizens, politicians and rights groups need to stand up and protest loudly. Because "honour killings" are no longer India's best kept secret.

http://www.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=14463[/tscii:952fc43237]

[PARAMASHIVAN]

Indian community torn apart by 'honour killings'By Geeta Pandey

BBC News, Delhi


Satvati shows the house where the killings took place Umesh Kumar and his wife Satvati Devi were woken in the middle of the night by loud cries coming from the neighbouring house.

"She was crying loudly. She was pleading, 'Kill me, but please don't hurt him.' She loved him and they wanted to get married," Ms Devi tells me.

Two days after teenage lovers Asha and Yogesh were brutally killed, Swaroop Nagar colony on the north-western outskirts of the Indian capital, Delhi, is still trying to come to terms with the tragedy.

Asha's family was opposed to a marriage because Yogesh belonged to a different, lower caste. Police have described the murders as a case of "honour killing".

They have arrested Asha's father and uncle in connection with the deaths and are looking for others.

In this poor, semi-rural community, tiny homes sit cheek-by-jowl and paper-thin walls offer little sound-proofing.

'Tied up'

When the cries on Sunday night became unbearable, Mr Kumar tried to intervene.

"When I went in, Yogesh was tied up in ropes. He had bruises all over him. And they were beating Asha," Umesh tells me.

"They" were Asha's uncle Omprakash Saini, her father Suraj Saini, their wives and her cousin, he says.

Continue reading the main story
“
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Honour in our community and society is paramount to us”
End Quote
Titoo Saini
"I tried to save the girl, but they pushed me around. They broke my spectacles. They told me not to interfere since it was an internal family matter."

The Sainis also warned Mr Kumar against calling the police.

"I don't have a phone, the pay phone booths are closed at night, and the other neighbours were too scared to get involved," Mr Kumar says.

The cries finally stopped at 4am. Ms Devi was sitting outside her front door when the Sainis came out, locked the house and left.

"We were wondering what happened to Asha and Yogesh," she says. "There were no more sounds from inside."

The bodies were brought out in the morning once the police arrived. And details began to emerge of the torture and beatings to which the young couple were subjected.

No remorse

"Their mouths were stuffed with rags, there were signs of beating and small burns on legs suggesting that they were possibly electrocuted," a senior police officer who was the first to reach the crime scene told the BBC.

Asha's uncle and father were arrested but the two men have shown no remorse.

"I'm not sorry," a defiant Omprakash Saini told reporters after his arrest. "I would punish them again if given a chance."

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
If they wanted to kill their daughter, that's okay. But they shouldn't have killed our boy”
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Meera Devi
The killings have stunned Delhi. Cases of "honour killings" are regularly reported from the neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, but in the capital they are uncommon.

Assistant commissioner of police Pankaj Kumar Singh, who is posted at Swaroop Nagar, says that although the area is part of the capital, the mindset of its people is the same as in the villages.

"A majority of the people here are migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. People here are deeply rooted in their traditional beliefs," Mr Singh says. "Caste considerations hold much sway."

In traditional Indian societies, women are often regarded as family property. Marriages are carefully arranged by parents and elders and relationships outside of caste are frowned upon.

But proximity to the city and access to education often bring in modern influences, sometimes creating a conflict between traditional beliefs and modern aspirations in the minds of the young.

And these sometimes have fatal consequences, as in the case of Asha and Yogesh. Although her family is no better off than his, it is from a higher caste.

There are no statistics on the number of "honour killings" in India, but Mr Singh says for every case that gets recorded, several others go unreported.

In the Gokulpuri area of north-east Delhi where the lovers lived and met, I visited the homes of both Asha and Yogesh, five minutes apart.

A group of local women sit mourning outside Yogesh's house. His sister, Renu Jatav, weeps inconsolably.

'Justified'

"I had no idea this could happen," she says. "He was having dinner, it was 9.30pm on Sunday when Asha's mother came and called him. Yogesh was a driver. She said someone needed the car, and he went."

"Four or five policemen came to our house the next morning. They said Yogesh had died," Renu's husband Rakesh Kumar says.


Renu Jatav is inconsolable over the murders "We want strict punishment for them. We want the death penalty. We want them hanged."

The neighbours vouch for Yogesh's character.

"He was a very good boy," one of them, Meera Devi, says. "We are very angry. We want justice. If they wanted to kill their daughter, that's okay. But they shouldn't have killed our boy."

At Asha's home, her relatives are equally angry.

Cousin Lokesh Kumar Saini says: "We had talked to Yogesh and his family in the past and told them to stay away. We had also found a good match for Asha and she was engaged.

"What will any parent do if they see their daughter in a compromising position with a man? What would you do if you were in the same situation?" he asks me angrily. "That's why my uncles killed them."

Another of Asha's uncles, Titoo Saini, is convinced "the killings were justified".

"We did it for our honour. Honour in our community and society is paramount to us," he says.

I ask them what honour the family has now that they are accused of murdering their own daughter?

"If she had run away with Yogesh, what honour would we have left then?" he asks.

"Moreover, that would have set a bad precedent for the other children in the family. They would have done the same. Then it would have been a slow and painful death for us every living moment. This is better," he says.

"Asha played in my arms as a baby. I carried her for her funeral. Did that not make me unhappy?"

But Titoo Saini is clear that marriage outside of caste is a bigger evil than murder.

"How can we marry outside the caste? This cannot be tolerated. Only an impotent man will accept this. If I was in their place, I would have done the same," he says.

[PARAMASHIVAN]

Death penalty in India 'honour killings' case

Five men have been sentenced to death and one jailed for life over the 2007 murder of a couple who married against the wishes of village elders.

The court in the northern state of Haryana last week convicted the men of the murders of Manoj and Babli, who were killed a month after they eloped.

Elders said they violated local customs by marrying within the same sub-caste.

Observers say this may be the first time an Indian court has awarded such a penalty over an "honour killing" case.

The young couple were kidnapped while they were travelling on a bus in Haryana in 2007. Their bodies were discovered later.

Those sentenced to death are all relatives of the girl, Babli, and include her brother, two uncles and two cousins, Indian media reports say.

The head of the village council in Haryana's Kaithal district, which ruled against the couple's marriage, was given life imprisonment. A driver found to have helped abduct the couple was given a seven-year prison term.

The village council said that by local tradition people within the same sub-caste are considered to be siblings.

The case was brought by the family of Manoj, Babli's husband. Unconfirmed media reports say that the couple had approached the police with their fears shortly before they were kidnapped and killed.

Campaigners hailed the verdict as a blow against "honour killings", which are quite common in parts of northern India.

Correspondents say such killings have often not been reported or widely discussed in the past because families usually accept the verdicts.

Those found guilty in the case have the right to appeal. Death sentences in India are rarely handed down and even more rarely carried out.