"I killed my sister because she brought a bad name to the family." “I killed her and her lover for the honor of the family. I want it to be a lesson for all the girls in town." With these statements and many similar ones, men around the world have justified the murder of their daughters, sisters or romantic partners.
Under the pretext of honor, every year 5,000 murders of women are recorded, according to the Network for Awareness of Honor-Based Violence. Of these, 1,000 take place in India and a further 1,000 in Pakistan. But these figures are only the tip of the iceberg, since many countries do not distinguish them from a common murder.
Recently, the case of Aneesa and Arooj Abbas, two young women from Terrassa murdered in Pakistan for rejecting the role that tradition attributes to them, has put the issue back on the agenda. The justification for the crime, for which the two husbands and two brothers of the victims have already been imprisoned, was to protect the honor of the family, supposedly cracked when they filed for divorce from their husbands. Unfortunately, these types of crimes are much more frequent than it seems, and they are only a more savage and evident expression of the abuses imposed by the patriarchal culture of honor.
We understand honor crimes as "those committed by the family, linked to the sexuality and lifestyle of people, specifically women, with the aim of restoring family honor", according to Núria Garcia, an expert on violence. macho and collaborator of the Valentes i Acompanyades association, which works to stop forced marriages and violence against women.
For Adriana Kaplan, anthropologist and professor of knowledge transfer at the UAB, these crimes are also part of the "patriarchal architecture", but she also insists on their "exemplary function". "These punishments have to set an example, not for the victim, but for the rest of the women in the community," she observes.
This practice is especially common in South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nepal, where the concept of honor is deeply embedded in the culture.
However, we must be careful not to judge different cultural realities with our Western values, according to the Indian writer and anthropologist, Ather Zia. Ella zia warns us that honor is "a very Eurocentric translation", and she invites us to reflect on how other cultures conceive this concept. "When we see honor killings, we think they are only committed in East Asia or South Asia, but if you look at countries in Europe and America, you see crimes of passion that are based on the same misogyny and patriarchy."
For Zia, the problem is a patriarchal social structure: "In most misogynistic and patriarchal societies, women are seen as the axis of the home, as the repository of family pride, and their bodies are seen as something to protect." ”, he assures.
Darshana Rijal, a young Nepali activist for women's rights, agrees with her, who denounces that the acts of women “supposedly” represent the honor of the entire family. “Such acts can be as simple as going to the gym or even talking to someone of the opposite sex,” she criticizes.
In addition, Rijal explains that cultural elements such as the caste system, dowries or virginity are used to maintain "honorable" behavior in the case of women, but these demands can result in torture and even murder in extreme cases, in some regions.
There are some cases, such as that of the young Iranian youtuber Tiba al-Ali, raped by her brother and strangled by her father in February, or that of the Pakistani celebrity Qandeel Baloch, murdered by her brother, that cause more commotion due to their notoriety. and arouse the indignation of thousands of women, who take to the streets to demand their rights. However, thousands of names and surnames continue to be forgotten every year, covered up to maintain the good reputation of families.
