Day 6
Honour What?!!
Did you know it’s considered ‘honourable’ to kill a woman? Do a little research and you’ll find scores of true stories like these:
1. A woman gets divorced and many years later, decides to remarry. Her son shoots her in cold blood – it is his duty to do so because her re-marriage will bring shame onto his family.
2. A woman marries a man her family doesn’t approve of. She moves far away from her home village to live with her husband, years later, returns for a visit. Her brother, who invited her back, stabs her to death in full view of dozens of approving villagers in order to preserve his honour.
3. The mother of two young children flees her violently abusive husband and shelters in her parents home. She files for a divorce, contrary to the wishes of her parents, and so they get the family chauffeur to shoot her in the head while she is consulting with her attorney.
4. An unmarried teenage girl becomes pregnant. First she serves a jail sentence for this ‘crime’ and then, after she is released, her younger brother kills her to satisfy the family honour. He does this by driving three times over her and her unborn child, in a pick-up truck.
5. A young woman refuses to marry the man her family has chosen for her; she plans, instead, to elope with her boyfriend. Her 17-year-old brother is instructed by their family to shoot her to death before she is able to escape.
6. A little girl, a mere toddler, is brutally raped by a man, but her parents leave her to bleed to death from her injuries, because she has dishonoured them.
Crimes like these happen all over the world. If the killers are caught, judges often mete out a very light punishment to them. A teenage boy is often the person chosen to commit the murder – just because a minor will receive an even lighter sentence than that imposed on an adult man.
Oftentimes the killings are covered up by the family and the community so it’s impossible to know just how many women and girls have been murdered (and still will be) by their fathers, their sons, their husbands and their brothers in the name of family ‘honour.’
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Follow the campaign:
Day 7: http://damariasenne.blogspot.com/2010/12/10-reasons-why-its-easier-for-man-to.html
Shukumisa: http://www.shukumisa.org.za/
Damaria Senne’s Blog Party: http://damariasenne.blogspot.com/
Day 5: http://moirarichards.bookslive.co.za/blog/2010/11/29/day-5/
