generalspeaking

The Cherished Daughters

They seem to be everywhere in the world, even where you least expect them to be; young girls, emerging adults, women whose personalities and behaviours manage to affront their families. Families whose expectations for their daughters, formed through ancient cultural tradition come up against another kind of reality they are not prepared to accept. Growing into adulthood for both young men and women is difficult at the best of times, in many circumstances, in all cultural backgrounds.

But within families whose strict religious orthodoxy restricts and prohibits mannerisms, expectations and behaviours relating to the young females in their midst, demanding a rigid observation of customary tribally-observed manners relating to modesty and a strict removal and separation from any and all unrelated males, young women are often doomed by happenstance. Accused of being flirtatious, of having furtively met with a young man, their behaviour becomes a violent affront to family honour.

Throughout the world of Islam, there are laws of custom and tradition that strictly prohibit unmarried women, including young girls, from public exhibition. Direct eye contact with a male outside the family, permitting a glimpse of hair, skin or body form to be revealed is forbidden. Aspiring to go out in public unchaperoned by a male family member is not countenanced.

Even a suspicion of having been compromised is enough to present as a threat to family honour. Anyone thought to be involved in an extramarital affair has forfeited life. There have been occasions when women who talked to strange men have left themselves open to charges of loose morals consigning themselves to death. Even instances where a girl requesting a song to be played on a radio, revealed as an unendurable affront to family honour.

And if a young woman becomes a victim of a sexual assault, it is assumed that she was responsible for eroding the normal restraint of a male by somehow flaunting her femininity and enticing the man beyond his endurance to restrain his natural impulses. A victim of rape she may be, but under certain interpretations of shariah law she is considered to be unclean, no respectable man would accept her as a wife, and her family honour has been destroyed.

A cleansing method is available, whereby honour can be restored, and that generally equates with a death sentence. This severely unforgiving view of women as corrupters of a male's chaste behaviour is a given in many societies, not only that of Islam. In Turkey, finally, a precedent has been set whereby a court in the city of Van rendered a murder sentence for an entire family.

Sixteen-year-old Naile Erdas became pregnant as a result of rape, and told no one of her condition, for obvious reasons. When she was admitted to hospital for a diagnosis of severe headaches, doctors recognized her condition. Her family made strenuous efforts to impress upon the hospital their need to have her return to her family home. But the doctors looking to her welfare well understood what might lay in store for the girl.

They alerted police and the local prosecutor's office to the situation, and a week after she gave birth, the prosecutor's office somehow saw fit to release her to her family after securing a promise from her father that she would not be harmed. Shortly after returning to the family home, her brother, who had been chosen to restore the family's honour, shot her to death.

This tradition of cleansing the record and redeeming family honour has a long tradition among many ethnic and religious groups. Among the Kurdish population in Turkey, despite protection under the law, 1,806 honour killings took place between the years 2001 to 2006, while 5,375 women chose to commit suicide in that same period. They were persuaded by their families to accept their duty, to themselves cleanse family honour.

The young girl's father, mother and two uncles were handed life sentences for instigating the murder. Her young brother, selected by family council to perform the honour-cleansing ritual because it was generally understood that younger men received lighter sentences, in this case was sentenced to life in jail. Another uncle,charged with failing to report the murder was given a 16-year jail term.

The Van Women's Association has hailed the verdict as a deterrent to further acts of propitiation to family honour. A researcher in honour killings at a Turkish university deemed that justice was done: "We can say this verdict is a first in terms of the harshness of the sentences and the fact that the entire family was convicted."

Young women in India remain vulnerable to violence when their dowries do not materialize as promised, or if they prove to be unable to achieve pregnancy, or to deliver a male child. They suffer such a deep level of personal human rights violations delivered by the malevolent intent of their in-laws that they often attempt suicide by self-immolation.

Other young women suffer acid being thrown in their faces. While others yet are murdered simply to remove them as dependent nuisances, however abused. Impoverished young girls are taken into marriage by elderly men who abuse them. Atrocities against women whose husbands have died still prevail in rural areas still practising sati, where a woman is expected to be burned along with her dead husband's body on his funeral pyre.

This world is not a very congenial place, all too often, for women living in traditional religious cultures.

Labels: Justice, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, January 14, 2009