Willful Daughters
Shades of the Montreal-based Shafia family, now on trial in Kingston, Ontario. Where father Mohammed Shafia, mother Tooba Mohammed Yahya and son Hamed Shaffia are on trial for the murder of their three teen-age daughters and the first wife of Mohammed. Witnesses have testified for weeks throughout the trial, for the prosecution.Child protection workers, extended family members, school teachers, all painting a picture of fearful children living in a horrible family situation of repression and violence. Evidence presented at trial of private disclosures secretly taped. Relatives of the dead testifying that there had been violence and death threats.
Somehow, the newly-purchased family vehicle that the girls and their 'aunt' just happened to be in one dark summer night ended up in the Rideau Canal at the Kingston Locks where the family had stopped at a local motel overnight returning from a happy family holiday in Niagara Falls to their home in Montreal.
The three girls, who had pleaded to be rescued and taken away from their violently dysfunctional home and their threatening father and brother, had been abandoned to their fate. Discovered the following day drowned, the car at the bottom of the canal, hours after their parents had reported them missing, at the local police station.
And goodness, here's another, very similar situation in Belgium, where a family of four has been imprisoned in another family 'honour killing'.
The Shafia girls met their collective death because they were disobeying their father's dictates that they dress modestly and have no contact with boys. The girls abandoned their niqab when they arrived at school and they enjoyed doing what all the other girls did at school, flirting with boys. Their brother, observing their 'slutty' behaviour, alerted their Afghan-Canadian father. They were condemned to death to restore family honour.
In Belgium, a court sentenced a Pakistani family to prison for the murder of the family daughter who was a law student, and who refused, like the older girl of the Shafia family, to marry a distant cousin never met. Sadia Sheikh, 20 years of age, was shot to death by her brother Mudusar.
Her father, Tarik Mahmood Sheikh, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. While mother Zahida Parveen Sariya was sentenced to 20 years and sister Sariya to 5 years. The shooter, brother Mudusar, received a 15-year-sentence in prison.
He shot his sister, but his sentence was less than that of his parents, since it was they who ordered the death of 20-year-old Sadia. She had left home after refusing the arranged marriage. And she lived common-law with a Belgian man. Mudusar emphasized his role as the murderer, attempting to spare his parents and sister.
Just as in the Kingston-Shafia case, the mother had persuaded the eldest daughter to return home, luring her back to her fate. Sadia Sheikh also spent time in a centre for victims of domestic violence. While she was there, she took the precaution of drawing up a will.
She had agreed to visit her family in the hopes of effecting a reconciliation. It is all these girls ever want; not to be estranged from their families, from those they love.
Who just happen to love the cultural tradition of restoring family honour more than they love the lives of willful, independence-seeking daughters.
Labels: Crime, Human Fallibility, Sexism, Societal Failures
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, December 13, 2011
<< Home