Honor Related Violence (Afghanistan)

Bebi, fears for her life, September 15, 2006

Bebi (not her real name) fears for her life after fleeing her house in the southeastern province of Paktia in June. The 15-year-old said she was forced into a marriage that she did not want. "I was engaged to an old man when I was only six months old, how can that be right?".

She's now living incognito with friends in the capital Kabul. Facilities to protect women like Bebi are virtually nil in Afghanistan and many resign themselves to their fate.

"My husband treated me like an animal, not as a human, with daily beatings and torture and locking me indoors, "Bebi said. "I know he [husband] is pursuing me to kill me because he thinks I have disgraced him but God knows it is he who was guilty".

So-called honour killings, which rights activists say have become increasingly common in Afghanistan, are murders of women or girls who are believed to have brought shame on the family name. They are usually carried out by male family members, or sometimes by 'contractors' who are paid to carry out the killing and occasionally by children too young to face the law.

The killings are commonly carried out on women and girls refusing to enter into an arranged marriage or for having a relationship that the family considers to be inappropriate. Due to such pressures from families, many women are driven to suicide or flee their homes to escape an honour killing.

Afghanistan: Honour killings on the rise
Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 15, 2006

Bibi Aisha, Nose and ears cut off, 2009

"When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out," 19-year-old Bibi Aisha of Afghanistan says with chilling candor.

Her beauty is still stunning and her confidence inspiring. It takes a moment for the barbaric act committed against her to register in your mind and sight.

Wearing her patterned scarf and with roughly painted nails she shares her story.

"It felt like there was cold water in my nose, I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood," she remembers.

It was an act of Taliban justice for the crime of shaming her husband's family.
. . .
Tortured and abused, she couldn't take it any longer and decided to run away. Two female neighbors promising to help took her to Kandahar province.
. . .
But eventually her father-in-law found her and took her back home.

That was the first time she met her husband. He came home from Pakistan to take her to Taliban court for dishonoring his family and bringing them shame.

The court ruled that her nose and ears must be cut off. An act carried out by her husband in the mountains of Oruzgan where they left her to die.

'Shaming' her in-laws costs 19 year old her nose, ears
Atia Abawi, CNN, March 18, 2010

Shakila and Ghulam Sakhi, Stabbed more than 50 times each, June 21, 2009

A father brutally murdered his daughter and a young boy for having love affairs in Samangan province, Northern Afghanistan. He stabbed them many times with a knife.

The girl was named Shakila and was 18 years old and the boy named Ghulam Sakhi was 22. This savage incident took place at 3 in the morning in Haji Umar Village of Aibak city (centre of Samangan).

Officer Amir Jan Istanikzai, police chief of Samangan, told PAN that the murder had been committed by Haji Gulbuddin, the girl’s father. He added that Haji Gulbuddin had called the police and the police went to his home and arrested him.

Stanikzai says that the he has taken the responsibility for the murder of the boy and girl so he is in custody and the case is under investigation.

Dr. Abdul Momin Frotan, in-charge in the Provincial Hospital of Samangan, said that the bodies of the boy and girl were brought to the hospital and that they both have been stabbed 50 to 60 times in their head, face and body.

Frotan claimed that according to the medical examinations, the girl has been raped.

Honor-Killing in Afghanistan: Father Kills His Daughter and Her Lover
RAWA News, June 21, 2009

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