MONTREAL — For months during the Shafia murder trial in Kingston, Ont., the term honour killing was bandied about as if it were some exotic ritual that only happened in other countries with cultures far removed and backward from our own.
But legal experts and those who work in women's shelters say that once the words are stripped away, the crime is one that happens often in Canada: women being killed for not doing as they are told.
"I think we're fascinated right now with the concept of honour killings because that was the name given to it by the prosecution and the accused but that doesn't change what the underlying activity is," said Pearl Eliadis, a Montreal human rights lawyer.
"It's a violent assault on women because they're women."
After the first-degree murder verdict was announced Sunday, the Internet was humming with cries to send Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, back to their native Afghanistan, as if their crimes were unheard of here.
The cold-blooded killings, as the judge in the case called them, of the couple's three daughters and Shafia's first wife, were doubtless among the most horrifying in recent Canadian history.
But there have been many cases where a man, furious with the behaviour of his girlfriend or wife, kills her, or the children, or all of them.
In Quebec in 2008 — the most recent year for which statistics are available from the provincial minister of public security — nine of the 11 people killed in conjugal violence were women.
There were 27 attempted murders, 23 of which were committed on women.
Police reported 17,321 domestic offences, 14,242 of which against women.
In 86 per cent of the cases, the perpetrator was either the woman's husband or her ex. Fourteen per cent of the crimes were committed by a boyfriend.
Guy Turcotte, a former Quebec cardiologist who stabbed his children multiple times after discovering his wife was having an affair, spoke at his murder trial of her "doing it in my house, in my bed."
It's true that leaving a situation of domestic violence can pose more of a challenge for some immigrant women, said Manon Monastesse, director of a Quebec association of housing for abused women. Often, if they leave their husband, they are shunned by the whole community, both here and abroad.
But the message to all women in those situations, no matter what their background, is the same, Monastesse said: " 'If you don't behave the way I want you to behave, you'll die.'
"There's a certain denial here about what's going on but all you have to do is look at the statistics . . ."
The patriarch of the Shafia family, frustrated he couldn't control his daughters, conspired with his son and second wife to kill Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13.
His first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, supported the girls' lifestyles, and so was killed, too. She wrote in her diary that she was abused, humiliated and isolated.
Far from being a religious belief, honour killings have their roots in tribal societies — predating Islam, Christianity and Hinduism — where loyalty to the tribe and honour were important cultural practices, said Payam Akhavan, who teaches criminal law at McGill University in Montreal.
And the concept is not as alien in our own history or laws as we like to think.
In English common law and European civil law, there is the defence of provocation, where if someone commits murder when provoked by rage or anger, the charge can be reduced to manslaughter.
That defence, said Akhavan, has its roots in the notion that a man, who, for example, walked in on his wife having sex with another man, had the right to take the life of the woman to restore his honour.
This notion, which has been modernized over time in our society, but not yet in others, should not be seen as some radical aberration, Akhavan said.
"When we see it as something which belongs to a specific religion or specific culture, it's somewhat deceptive and misleading because we create a platform for feeling virtuous for our own values and masking the reality of massive domestic abuse in our own culture."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Sue Montgomery
But legal experts and those who work in women's shelters say that once the words are stripped away, the crime is one that happens often in Canada: women being killed for not doing as they are told.
"I think we're fascinated right now with the concept of honour killings because that was the name given to it by the prosecution and the accused but that doesn't change what the underlying activity is," said Pearl Eliadis, a Montreal human rights lawyer.
"It's a violent assault on women because they're women."
After the first-degree murder verdict was announced Sunday, the Internet was humming with cries to send Mohammad Shafia, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya and their son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, back to their native Afghanistan, as if their crimes were unheard of here.
The cold-blooded killings, as the judge in the case called them, of the couple's three daughters and Shafia's first wife, were doubtless among the most horrifying in recent Canadian history.
But there have been many cases where a man, furious with the behaviour of his girlfriend or wife, kills her, or the children, or all of them.
In Quebec in 2008 — the most recent year for which statistics are available from the provincial minister of public security — nine of the 11 people killed in conjugal violence were women.
There were 27 attempted murders, 23 of which were committed on women.
Police reported 17,321 domestic offences, 14,242 of which against women.
In 86 per cent of the cases, the perpetrator was either the woman's husband or her ex. Fourteen per cent of the crimes were committed by a boyfriend.
Guy Turcotte, a former Quebec cardiologist who stabbed his children multiple times after discovering his wife was having an affair, spoke at his murder trial of her "doing it in my house, in my bed."
It's true that leaving a situation of domestic violence can pose more of a challenge for some immigrant women, said Manon Monastesse, director of a Quebec association of housing for abused women. Often, if they leave their husband, they are shunned by the whole community, both here and abroad.
But the message to all women in those situations, no matter what their background, is the same, Monastesse said: " 'If you don't behave the way I want you to behave, you'll die.'
"There's a certain denial here about what's going on but all you have to do is look at the statistics . . ."
The patriarch of the Shafia family, frustrated he couldn't control his daughters, conspired with his son and second wife to kill Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti Shafia, 13.
His first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, supported the girls' lifestyles, and so was killed, too. She wrote in her diary that she was abused, humiliated and isolated.
Far from being a religious belief, honour killings have their roots in tribal societies — predating Islam, Christianity and Hinduism — where loyalty to the tribe and honour were important cultural practices, said Payam Akhavan, who teaches criminal law at McGill University in Montreal.
And the concept is not as alien in our own history or laws as we like to think.
In English common law and European civil law, there is the defence of provocation, where if someone commits murder when provoked by rage or anger, the charge can be reduced to manslaughter.
That defence, said Akhavan, has its roots in the notion that a man, who, for example, walked in on his wife having sex with another man, had the right to take the life of the woman to restore his honour.
This notion, which has been modernized over time in our society, but not yet in others, should not be seen as some radical aberration, Akhavan said.
"When we see it as something which belongs to a specific religion or specific culture, it's somewhat deceptive and misleading because we create a platform for feeling virtuous for our own values and masking the reality of massive domestic abuse in our own culture."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Sue Montgomery
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