So. Once again. Girl gets raped. Brother shoots her 12 times in the name of family honor. Gets sentenced to 15 years. Sentence reduced to 7 and a half. Rinse. Repeat.
Then again, Syria doesn’t have it any better lately.
Penal code to be revised by Jordanian parliament.
Maybe there’s hope this time around?
Maybe.
Update: add two more to the count
nah, no hope
this is very painful to read, first reducing the sentence for a so-called honor crime, then for considering a raped victim a threat to honor…
some judges deserve no sympathy. They’re supposed to be among the elite thinkers in a society, however some of them like the one above are the scum of the earth
I just read that a 24-year-old farmer killed his unmarried 27-year-old sister for ‘suspecting’ her behavior, and then turned himself in to the police.
Man does he have a legitimate excuse! I can’t believe how our law even has a segment about crimes of honor! I mean, sure, you can have that, but now every other day some guy kills a relative without even having solid proof that she had indeed done something dishonorable, and pretend it’s a ‘crime of honor’!
Way to go.
Don’t get your hopes up, as long as the parliament is filled with tribal sheiks leaders, the law will stay the same.
It’s mindset and culture that need to be addressed if we are to make progress towards combating this criminal behavior. The legal dimension is merely a tiny part of a small facet of the solution.
If we start today thru education from pre-school onwards, and a public social conversation at different levels, and a progressive dialog within places of faith, with a force of unrelenting full time activists, we may be able to achieve getting down to 1 killing in 2029. And zero in 2030. This, I believe, is the best case scenario. And I’m not being grim nor negative when I say this. Changing a deeply ingrained cultural mindset will take 20 years of very hard work.
So the question an entire country should ask is: when would we like to start day 1 of this 20 year objective?
question Nas since knowing things seems to be your forte: is the problem with the law or the implementation? From what I understand the law simply makes allowances for crimes of passion (recently broadened to include both men and women), but the “passion” clause is most often invoked for men.
Is this correct??
Absolutely repulsive. Enough already!
Nadine – I agree with you, but changing mentalities takes time, as you point out. The law has to change & fast. Locking ‘honour’ murderers up w/sentences befitting their common criminal behaviour might help towards changing mentalities.