UJ: Honour Crimes
“I woke up screaming with all I had. The pain I felt was almost impossible to bear and that’s when I jumped off screaming and kicking with my hair stacked with sweat. I knew I had a terrifying nightmare once again. I started to assimilate into my surroundings, I discovered I wasn’t in my room . I was in a very dark place and it was impossible for me to deny the horrific smell that engulfed this place. I so wanted to get out of this heinous place and that’s when I started to get up effortlessly when I assumingly thought I hit something. My assumptions were in the right place. I came closer to it and that’s when I came to conclude that it was a body. At the beginning, I wanted to scream, but then I held a calm breath, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to fight the flies and the smell coming out of it. Dear lord, its scenery was terrifying, it was covered with blood stains
Suddenly I felt the urge to touch it, to see for whom it belongs to. It was…………..
It was my body ! my body! It was me who was lying in front of me! I could no longer comprehend it, when and how did this happen. Then I was struck by a bitter realization and it all came to me at once. I remembered it all, I remembered when my own brother was pointing the gun at me and my mum was begging him not to pull the trigger while my father and other uncles were encouraging him to do so. Wait, I think I now remember why I was killed !
Write this down: I am Honouria who has been raped at the age of 16 . I was killed by my own brother who was encouraged by my own father and male relatives that I deserved to die because I am no longer a virgin. My brother received a lenient reduction in penalty, and everyone went back to their normal lives after the incident as if I never existed. Was my life worth nothing?”
Honoria is a representation of every woman who are innocently killed by the so called honor crimes that are usually carried out by a male relative as an act of purifying and cleansing the family’s reputation to restore their honour . According to the UN, this is what actually happens to thirteen women who are murdered in the name of honor every single day, that makes it five thousand women a year. It does not only occur in the Middle East, It also occurs in migrant communities in Europe and the USA .Moreover, It has also been estimated that several honor killings have been fabricated in migrant communities in the USA.
I am Haneen Amireh and my question to you is as follows: According to your personal perspective , how does your understanding of honour crimes-whether u think its a religious or cultural phenomena-affect your opinion of Jordan specifically and the Middle East as a whole?
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My name is Katie Cavins. I actually studied in Jordan this past summer in Yarmouk University in Irbid. Jordan is a beautiful country! While we were there, however, we did go to a lecture about honor killings, where we were told that this is mostly a cultural phenomenon. I am inclined to believe that what I was told is true, and that honor killings are not a religious phenomenon. This does not lessen the severity of these crimes and it saddens me that women are killed for the sake of what a family believes is their honor.
In my mind, though, honor crimes do not influence my opinion of Jordan, or the Middle East in any way. They are certainly portrayed in the media as the result of the culture of the Middle East as a whole, but I just can’t believe everyone in the Arab world supports, or even wants to accept, the idea of honor crimes. I know there is a large number of people in the Arab world who are against honor crimes, but, as I see it, these crimes are the result of history and the idea of tradition. Some aspects of culture and heritage are hard to change if they are ingrained in the mindset of the people. I think that honor killings is one of these things, and all cultures have remnants of their history that are in need of changing or being erased. I do not see this as the fault of the culture as a whole, but I think the people who still see honor killings as acceptable and who convince their young sons to commit them are to blame and are in the wrong. I do hope honor killings are erased from the entire world as soon as possible, and I think it is everyone’s responsibility to make it clear that honor killings are unacceptable. I think that the fact that those who force their sons to commit these honor killings just because they are younger and will get a lesser sentence should be punished themselves. This is the responsibility of the government, however, and I do not think we can blame an entire region for what their government may or may not be doing to eliminate a terrible crime.