Murder in the Name of Honor Read online

  MURDER IN THE NAME OF HONOUR

  ‘Disturbing, informative and readable, Murder in the Name of Honour tackles one of the most shocking crimes of the 21st Century. A remarkable insight into a horrifying crime and a call to action for everyone who cares about human rights. A must read.’

  —Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights, and chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council

  ‘Rana is utterly inspiring. She is a young woman of courage, committed to the principles of truth and justice . . . If enough people read this book, maybe the next time a young woman is being stoned to death for having fallen in love, someone will intervene to save her life.’

  —Jane Fonda, actress, writer, and political activist

  ‘Rana Husseini has almost single-handedly brought this crime to public attention through her newspaper articles and campaigns, and her achievements in journalism and human rights have been internationally recognized. She does not just pontificate from behind her desk – Ms. Husseini has investigated the crime scenes, visited the prisons, and talked to both victims and perpetrators, and has produced a brilliantly researched and passionate attack on honour killings around the world. A powerful, heartfelt and important book.’

  —Queen Noor of Jordan is an international humanitarian activist focusing on cross-cultural understanding, human rights, disarmament, conflict prevention and recovery, and pioneering Middle Eastern programmes in the areas of sustainable development, women’s empowerment, and micro-finance

  MURDER IN THE

  NAME OF HONOUR

  The True Story of

  One Woman’s Heroic Fight Against

  an Unbelievable Crime

  Rana Husseini

  MURDER IN THE NAME OF HONOUR

  First published by Oneworld Publications 2009 Reprinted 2009

  This ebook edition published by Oneworld Publications 2011

  Copyright © Rana Husseini 2009

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under Berne Convention No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise.

  A CIP record for this title is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN-978–1–78074–036–2

  Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India

  Cover design by James Nunn

  Oneworld Publications

  185 Banbury Road

  Oxford OX2 7AR

  England

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  To my mother Randa Saifi-Husseini, my mentor, who taught me the joys of life and showed me the value of being grateful for every good thing that happens to me.

  To my late father Ahmad Husseini, who dedicated himself to make sure we lived the best life. He did not live to see my accomplishments but I live better knowing that he would have been proud.

  To my brother Moutaz, who has continuously shown support for my work and who still looks out for his little sister.

  To my nephew and niece Zein and Hana: May ‘Murder in the Name of Honour’ be a thing of your past.

  This book is also dedicated to every woman that has been murdered in the name of so-called honour.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Jane Fonda

  Introduction

  1. Murder in Amman

  2. Interview with a Killer

  3. Honour as an Excuse

  4. Bound by Honour

  5. Excusing Murder

  6. We Fought the Law ...

  7. The Royal March for Justice

  8. Opening the Floodgates

  9. Changing Attitudes

  10. Two Steps Back

  11. A World of Honour

  12. Love, Honour and Obey

  13. Chaos in Europe

  14. Honour in the USA

  15. The Road to Real Honour

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Index

  FOREWORD

  Jane Fonda

  As I write this foreword, CNN is broadcasting the footage of a young woman being publicly stoned to death by a lynch mob, while the police just stand by watching. It pains me deeply to live in a world where a Kurdish woman has been killed for falling in love with a man from a different faith. Murders like this, which happen around the world, destroy the honour they are intended to restore. Honour is respect for life. Honour is respect for love. There is no honour in murder.

  I first met Rana Husseini in 2005, at an international meeting of women in the media organized by Equality Now with journalists from Algeria, India, Jordan, Kenya, Palestine, Peru and Saudi Arabia. Rana Husseini was being honoured for her groundbreaking work as an investigative reporter for The Jordan Times. She had broken the silence on so-called ‘honour’ killings in Jordan. The stories were devastating, but Rana was utterly inspiring. She is a young woman of courage, committed to the principles of truth and justice, and her writing has sparked a national campaign in Jordan to stop this violence and to hold those responsible for it accountable under the law.

  Rana’s work is a testament to the power of the pen over the sword, and this book will no doubt be an invaluable contribution to advocacy efforts around the world to end gender-based violence. No country is free from violence against women, and the UN has estimated that one in three women around the world will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. Domestic violence and rape are universal, while other forms of violence take culturally specific forms. Rana’s clear, strong voice cuts through the north/south, us/them divides that are so often used to marginalize violence against women in its varied forms.

  Breaking the silence is only the first step towards social change. Rana’s work has provoked much discussion in Jordan, and it is heartening to know that over time attitudes have started to change and the legal system is beginning to take these ‘honour’ killings more seriously. In this heated debate, prejudice is plainly exposed and the way in which women are spoken of is all too familiar. Women as property and the sanctity of the hymen, dubbed by Rana as ‘the small piece of quasi-mythical flesh’ by which women’s value is measured, are all too familiar themes that reinforce discrimination against women around the world.

  The Universal Declaration of Human Rights starts with the principle that ‘all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’, a principle universally challenged by violence against women. From the time she came across her first case of ‘honour’ killing, the murder of a girl by her brother for having been raped by her other brother, Rana Husseini has followed her instinct, guided by her heart and conscience. If enough people read this book, maybe the next time a young woman is being stoned to death for having fallen in love, someone will intervene to save her life.

  INTRODUCTION

  Imagine your sister or daughter being killed for chewing gum, for laughing at a joke in the street, for wearing make-up or a short skirt, for choosing her own boyfriend/husband or becoming pregnant.

  This is what happens to five thousand women who are murdered each year in the name of honour; that’s thirteen women every single day. It is very likely that this figure, calculated by the UN in 2000, is a gross underestimate. Many cases are never reported and many more so-called honour killings are disguised as suicides and disappearances. This is something I know to be true in my home country of Jordan where, according to police and medical officials, there is an average of twenty-five so-called honour killings annually.

  A so-called honour killing occurs when a family feels that their female relat
ive has tarnished their reputation by what they loosely term ‘immoral behaviour’.1 The person chosen by the family to carry out the murder (usually male: a brother, father, cousin, paternal uncle or husband) brutally ends their female relative’s life to cleanse the family of the ‘shame’ she brought upon them. The title ‘honour killing’ is ironic in the extreme because these murders, and the manner in which they are carried out, lack any honour whatsoever.

  It was in my capacity as a journalist writing for The Jordan Times, Jordan’s only English-language daily newspaper, that I had an eye-opening encounter with one such murder that changed my life forever. Thankfully, despite strict state censorship of the media when I started reporting in the mid-1990s, my courageous editors agreed that the story should be published. The resulting article, published on 6 October 1994, appeared under the headline ‘Murder in the name of honour’.

  I did not know it then, but I had begun a quest that has since become all-consuming and has taken me all over the world. Thanks to the continued support of my editors, I was able to investigate and report on honour killings in depth. As time went on, I gradually realized that while reporting these crimes was a step in the right direction, it was never going to be enough – I had to do something else to end these senseless murders. So I began a sensational campaign to change the law and attitudes in Jordan, a campaign that I, along with many others, have since taken across the world.

  This book tells my story so far, from my humble beginnings as a naïve but enthusiastic and stubborn journalist to the campaigns to change Jordanian law, as well as my experiences in other countries in the Middle East, and investigations into so-called honour killings across Europe (especially the UK) as well as the USA. This book is also an evaluation of the current situation around the world in terms of the numbers of honour killings and the laws available to murderers to escape justice. I am sure that many readers will be truly shocked to see just how widespread and out of control this phenomenon is across the world, from the Third World to the First.

  Fighting so-called crimes of honour has proved to be a perilous and traumatic journey. My life has been regularly threatened and my reputation is under constant attack. I find myself frequently slandered and libelled. Examples include accusations that I am a ‘radical feminist seeking fame’ or that I’m a ‘western-collaborator intent on tarnishing the delicate fabric of the pure [Jordanian] society’.

  Unfortunately, some influential and powerful people, such as MPs, judges, lawyers and policemen, have opposed me and, as extraordinary as it seems, believe that those who claim to have killed in the name of honour deserve lenient punishments, because everyone has the right to protect their family’s honour. In my own country, Jordanian law states that those who murder in a passionate frenzy (for example, men who have caught their wives in the embrace of another) deserve mercy. As we shall see, such laws and leniency are by no means unique to Jordan (for example, a similar law is still in place in the UK). Perpetrators are well aware of the sympathy shown by their country’s legal system, and abuse it to their advantage. Thus, in many cases, the crimes often have serious hidden intentions far removed from honour – such as the murder of female siblings in order to claim sole inheritance of the family estate. Murders are often meticulously planned by several family members but are then claimed as ‘crimes of honour’, again far removed from the state of blind anger associated with this crime.

  Sometimes all that is needed to incite murder is a deliberate and malicious campaign of gossip. In fact, the majority of so-called honour killings I reported on were based on mere suspicion, something I have since seen repeated in countries across the world. The problem is not restricted to adultery. Generational conflict, teen culture, urbanization and adolescent rebellion are common trigger factors in immigrant communities in European countries as well as the USA.

  As I have already mentioned, honour killing is a global phenomenon and takes place in many more countries than most people realize. Besides Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, Palestine, India, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Yemen and Uganda, honour killings occur throughout Europe and the USA. The number of honour killings has been rising in recent years among immigrant communities in Europe, particularly Germany, France, Scandinavia and the UK – and the authorities have been caught napping. For example, British police are currently reviewing more than one hundred murder cases in the belated realization that they may in fact have been so-called honour killings.

  Until recently, so-called honour killings have received little attention because they are all too often disguised as a traditional or cultural practice which has to be respected and accepted by everyone. Many people associate them exclusively with Islamic communities, but while some Muslims do murder in the name of honour – and sometimes claim justification through the teachings of Islam – Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and others also maintain traditions and religious justifications that attempt to legitimize honour killings.2 But crimes of honour are just that: crimes, pure and simple. For me, wherever their roots are supposed to lie, they are nothing to do with tradition, culture or religion. They are all about control – an effective method of regulating the freedom of movement, freedom of expression and sexuality of women. They violate rights to life, liberty and bodily integrity; they violate prohibition of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment; the prohibition on slavery; the right to freedom from gender-based discrimination and sexual abuse and exploitation; the right to privacy and to marry and start a family.

  I am not a legal, religious, cultural, historical, tribal, social or moral expert, but I am an Arab Muslim woman intent upon living in a sound society where all members benefit from justice, regardless of rank, religion, race or gender. I, like any other citizen of this world, seek to feel safe. I want to live as part of a system in which crimes are seen for what they are, freed of the double standards that mask their heinous nature, and punished with a severity that matches the crime.

  CHAPTER 1

  Murder in Amman

  In summer the temperature in Jordan soars to the unpleasantly high thirties. Across the sweltering capital, those of Amman’s citizens who were fortunate enough not to have to make their living on the teeming streets hid away from the sun in the city’s many coffee shops.

  It was 31 May 1994, the day that Kifaya’s mother, uncles and brothers had decided she would die.

  In the built-up part of the conservative old city, Kifaya sat, tied to a chair in the kitchen of her family home. The sweets that her older brother, Khalid, had bought earlier to persuade her that everything was all right lay untouched on the counter.

  Kifaya’s crime was to have allowed herself to be raped by her other brother, Mohammad. She had then been forced by her family secretly to abort his child and had been made to marry a man thirty-four years her senior, whom she had divorced after six miserable months.

  She had shamed her family. There was only one solution.

  Khalid held a glass to Kifaya’s lips, and told her to drink some water. He asked her to recite verses from the Quran and picked up a knife. Kifaya begged for mercy. Outside, the neighbours listened but did nothing as she started to scream.

  * * *

  ‘You’re a professional,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll know what to say when you get there. Just stay focused, stay focused.’

  It was 1 June 1994. I turned off Amman’s busy commuter highway and drove upwards with mounting apprehension towards one of the most impoverished areas of the city.

  Jordan’s capital, home to two million souls, is always congested, but nowhere more so than in the poorest parts of the city. There’s no rail or metro system, and in old Amman, the narrow streets cannot hope to cope with freight trucks, buses and cars.

  As I sat behind an ancient truck that coughed exhaust fumes at my battered rust-bucket of a car, I recited the words I’d read in the paper for the umpteenth time that morning. ‘Thirty-two-year-old man kills sixteen-year-old si
ster in Hashemi Shamali. Surrenders to police. Investigations underway.’

  I don’t know how many times I saw similar four-line stories spread all over the Arabic press. Something told me that I needed to investigate these stories. As a twenty-six-year-old crime journalist, I was still somewhat uncertain of myself. I had been working for The Jordan Times, the only English-language daily in Jordan, for just nine months.

  Journalism had become a career choice almost by accident. My father, a civil engineer, and my mother, a librarian, both supported my dreams of studying Public Relations and Advertising at a US university and so when I won a place at Oklahoma City University in 1987 they were only too happy for me to go.

  This was around the time of the first Palestinian uprising, and a reporter called Corky Huffin asked me to write about the intifada (although I hold Jordanian nationality, I am originally Palestinian). I wrote the article and it was published. Corky then asked me to join the university’s newspaper since they always needed reporters, so I did and loved it. I wrote about women’s sports as I was an athlete myself (I played basketball for Jordan’s national team) and then switched majors, focusing on journalism.

  During the final semester I worked for the weekly Oklahoma Gazette, where I wrote about social issues; I learned how people can make a difference and help each other and how journalism helps them to do this. By the time I returned to Jordan, I knew I wanted to focus on women’s issues but had no idea what I was about to get into.

  As I drove deeper into the poor neighbourhood, the buildings became shabbier; the road narrowed and the streets soon became jammed with cars forced to a honking crawl as pedestrians spilled from the crowded pavements.

  I stopped the car and rolled down the window. A young man was striding purposefully down the road towards me. I called out to him: ‘Have you heard about a young girl who’s been murdered?’