The United Nations estimates that 5,000 honour killings occur annually. They take place in Bangladesh, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, the UK and Uganda. In countries not reporting to the UN, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the Palestinian territories, the situation seems even worse.
Honour killing is rooted in age-old patriarchal cultural traditions. It has a long history in developing countries of the Muslim Middle East and Hindi South Asia, but also in Catholic countries, including Italy and in Latin American, and even in the UK and Canada. These killings are a rebellion against modernity. They are attempts to stop or contain social development, to hold onto older traditional values especially concerning social relations and sexuality.
A series of honour killings in Europe and Canada over the last few years illustrates this disturbing phenomenon in the 'civilised' West. Most upsetting, in 2006 in Southport, on the Gold Coast, a violent domestic dispute involving the murder of a mother, Yasmine Hussain, was initially reported as an honour killing, the first reported case in Australia since 9/11. When the smoke cleared, the daughter, Kaihana (pictured), was charged with killing her mother in a fit of rage over her boyfriend. She remains in prison awaiting trial.
Last year in Britain, Bachan Athwal, a 70-year-old grandmother was convicted for the murder of her daughter-in-law, Surjit Athwal; Mahmod Mahmod, 52, and his brother, Ari Agha Mahmod, 51, were convicted of the murder of their 20-year-old sister, Banaz Mahmod.
In Berlin in 2005, Hatan Surucu, a 23-year-old German woman of Turkish background, was shot and killed by her three brothers for breaking with family values. According to Seyran Ates, a Turkish civil rights lawyer living in Germany, 'Such killings reflect the widely held view in Islam that the honour of a man lies between the legs of a woman.'
In Holland, the number of reported honour-related violent incidents in the Rotterdam region has increased significantly. According to the regional health authorities, the number of such reports more than doubled during the first half of 2007 to 70, up from 30 for all of 2006. As the report's author noted, 'This is just the tip of the iceberg.'
In Canada, a couple of years ago a 14-year-old female rape victim was strangled to death by her father and brother because she had supposedly tarnished the family name. In a second case, a man