In June 2009, Canadians were horrified to discover that three teenage women and their aunt may have been the victims of honour killing in Kingston, Ontario. The tragedy is the latest in what is becoming a more frequent occurrence.
Frequency of Honour Killings Rising
Writing for Canwest News Service, Shannon Proudfoot reported (July 23, 2009) that the Kingston incident is one of many. “Up to a dozen have died for the same reason in Canada in the last decade,” she wrote. “'And it’s happening more often,' says Amin Muhammad, a psychiatrist who studies honour killings at Memorial University in Newfoundland.”
Muhammad says there haven’t been a lot of cases in Canada “but now the cases are increasing, and very soon we’ll have a problem in Canada.”
This is a challenge that is growing in other immigrant-receiving countries. On September 24, 2009, BBC News reported that, “The Crown Prosecution Service is doubling its legal team fighting so-called ‘honour’ crimes in London. The 10 specialist prosecutors will be increased to 20 in a bid to tackle what it calls "an abuse of human rights.”
Worldwide Problem of Killing to Preserve Family Honour
The United Nations Population Fund in its State of the World Report for 2000 wrote that, “So-called ‘honour’ killings take the lives of thousands of young women every year, mainly in Western Asia, North Africa, and parts of South Asia. At least 1,000 women were murdered in Pakistan in 1999.”
More recently, The Independent reported (July 19, 2008) that, “The UN estimates that 5,000 honour killings take place globally every year, from Brazil to Pakistan to Britain.”
That works out to roughly one every two hours.
Rationale for Honour Killing
The tradition involves killing young women who defy the wishes of their parents. It’s considered acceptable in some male-dominated societies where there is a suspicion of intimate relations between a woman and a man. That could include alleged adultery, sex outside of marriage, or simply becoming close companions.
Even women who have been victims of rape and sexual assault may be targets of “honour killings,” as some communities legally and/or culturally equate these violent acts with sex outside of marriage.
But women and girls have been killed for minor “transgressions” as well, such as simply being in the presence of a male who is not a relative, refusing to agree to an arranged marriage, for falling in love with someone who is unacceptable by family standards, for seeking divorce, or for trying to escape marital violence. Sometimes, the mere perception that a woman has behaved disobediently, thus supposedly shaming her father, brother, uncle, or cousin, has been reason enough to make a brutal attack on her life.
Honour Killings Arrive in Canada
Several cases in Canada have generated enormous anger in mainstream society and have brought heavy criticism on the country’s immigration and multiculturalism policies.
- In 2000, Jaswinder Sidhu from Maple Ridge, British Columbia was killed in India. Police allege the murder was carried out because according to justiceforjassi.com “she went against her family’s wishes and married the man she loved - Mithu Singh - a poor rickshaw driver.”
- Primetimecrime.com reports that 17-year-old Amandeep Atwal, of Kitimat, British Columbia, died after being stabbed 17 times by her father. The attack took place in July 2003 because her family disapproved of her dating a Caucasian man.
- On December 10, 2007, Aqsa Parvez passed away in the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The 16-year-old girl died of strangulation and her father and brother face first-degree murder charges. According to mississauga.com Ms. Parvez was in conflict with her family over “religious disputes, such as not wearing the Muslim head scarf known as a hijab, her desire to wear westernized clothing, and her participation in non-Muslim teenage activities.”
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