Heart of honor: the death of Du'a Khalil Aswad

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Friday May 18, 2007 · 3:29 PM PDT

2007/05/18 · 15:29

"In this case, Dua Khalil, a 17-year-old Kurdish girl whose religion is Yazidi, was dragged into a crowd in a headlock with police looking on and kicked, beaten and stoned to death last month."
Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing'

How do you discuss events like this with a rational voice? How do you justify the cultural mores of a religion, a gender, or a tribe, or a society, or a community or country, when the actions taken under the banner of honor and tradition are so vile, so horrible, and so wrong that there will never be equal justice for the victims in a court of law or in the eyes of the world?

I have three daughters. My youngest is a seventeen year old who disagrees with me on an almost hourly basis now, our parent-child relationship a temporary casualty to hormones and peer pressure and the competing demands of parental control and teenage independence. I’m wise enough to know that this conflict and battle will pass with age and maturity – on her part as well as mine.

Paxshan Zangana, a member of Kurdistan's parliament and head of its women's rights committee, says that even in the north of Iraq, where it's relatively peaceful, authorities don't often learn about honor killings because of their secretive nature.

"There are no reliable data about women being killed, or even general violence against women," she told ABC News.

Often occurring in remote villages, it used to be common knowledge in northern Iraq that honor killings of women did occasionally take place, according to Zangana, but now they're becoming more frequent.

"The number of times we heard about honor killings was going down throughout the 1990s," she said, "but lately, in the past two years, we've been hearing more frequent reports about these killings and other kinds of violence against women. It's getting close to becoming a phenomenon."
The Dishonorable Death of Doa

I take a deep breath each day. I search out patience wherever I find it. I scrape empathy into my psyche and then drizzle it on my tongue, to soften harsh words of criticism directed at her. Her language at times, the music she likes (rap music, much of which I dislike for the rampant sexism inherent in videos and lyrics, though I often like the rhythms and the mix), the clothes she wears, sometimes her choice in friends – all these things germinate the potential for daily turmoil in our household.

The murder of Dua in a so-called honour killing is a tragedy for her family and the entire community in Kurdistan. There is no justification whatsoever for this crime. Dua’s death and the subsequent retaliation against the Yezidi community are a reminder to all of us, as individuals and as a society, that we have to continue to fight against the violent and archaic mindset that sadly persists today.
Statement: KRG condemns murder of Dua Khalil Aswad

At the end of the day, I kiss her goodnight the same way that I have for seventeen years. At the end of the day, she is my child, born of me, carrying me forward into the future, holding my love in her heart, if sometimes not in her behavior. She is my child. My child.

How is honor regained by a man when he is compelled to destroy what he has created, what he should love? How is a family restored to honor? There is endless shame in this.

"Nobody tried to help Dua or alleviate her pain, but as she was being stoned and kicked, a man came and threw a jacket over the lower half of her body to cover her legs. For them, it is not shameful to cruelly kill a young girl, but it is shameful if her legs are revealed while she suffers unbearable agony..."
In the Name of Honor - Diana Mukkaled

Domestic violence, honor killings, violence against women worldwide, rape as weapon of ethnic cleansing. Fuck platitudes on women’s rights and equality gains – this is not a woman’s world.