Killing has no honour

SMN No. 10, October 16, 2010

More and more netizens are showing support for the victims of so-called “honour crimes” with the approach of the international day to protest such killings at the end of October.

The issue of “honour crimes”, particularly in rural areas of Syria, has stirred much internal debate in the past few years.

Under Syrian law, men who catch a female family member engaging in adultery or other “illegitimate sexual acts” or even in a “suspicious state” are exempted from the standard punishments for murder. Those convicted of murders deemed to be honour killings face a sentence of only a few years in jail.

A Facebook page created last year to condemn this practice has so far attracted some 4,000 members.

Women’s rights groups have designated October 29 as a day of solidarity with victims of this form of killing. This date commemorates the sentencing of a man who murdered his sister Zahra AlAzou to only two-and-a-half years and in prison. Since his crime was described as an “honour killing”, the brother received a more lenient sentence.

On Facebook, commentators criticised Syrian laws that seem to excuse murder, as well as other social practices they said were incompatible with the modern world.

One member of the group asked why laws do not also give women a less severe sentence for killing a husband or relative because they “breached the honour of the families”.

In the past month, a number of “honour crimes” were reported in several Syrian towns. A woman was killed by villagers in Qamishli, in the north-eastern part of the country, who claimed they were protecting her family’s honour.

Women’s rights activists estimate that hundreds of women are killed yearly in Syria in the name of “honour” without eliciting serious retribution from the judiciary.