Sheer barbarism!'Honor Killing' in Italy Spurs Quest for Justice
Run Date: 08/06/07
By Angela Boskovitch
WeNews correspondent
After a Pakistani woman was slain by relatives in Italy, an immigrant women's advocacy group moved into action to make the murder the last "honor killing" in Italy and also deflect anti-Muslim sentiment stirred by the crime.
BRESCIA, Italy (WOMENSENEWS)--When the preliminary hearing in the "honor killing" trial for the murder of 20-year-old Hina Saleem adjourned in late June, Moroccan-born Souad Sbai was on the scene.
"We want justice for Hina and we ask that her dreams of freedom and her sacrifice should not be forgotten," said Sbai, president of the Rome-based Italian Association of Moroccan Women.
Then she and other demonstrators outside the courthouse carried white lilies to Saleem's gravestone in a part of the cemetery designated for Muslims.
The defendants in this case--Saleem's father and three male relatives--have chosen an abbreviated legal procedure. The trial will reconvene on Oct. 25 for a day of witness testimony, followed by closing arguments to be delivered on Oct. 26. Saleem's father has admitted his guilt to the police. Despite the confession, as yet none of the four defendants has been formally convicted.
The defendants will receive a one-third reduction of any sentence under the arrangement with the court. If they receive life imprisonment, the sentence would be reduced to 30 years. The sentence could be even further reduced resulting from "extenuating circumstances" as defined by the judge.
The Italian Association of Moroccan Women is composed of Moroccan and Italian women working to reduce gender-based violence in immigrant communities and at the same time promote Muslim social integration.
Vowing to be present throughout the rest of the proceedings, members of the group portray the case as a stab at its own heart.
'I Am Hina'
At the hearing on June 28 the group bused women from around Italy to demonstrate outside the courthouse and hold up placards saying "Io sono Hina," which translates to "I am Hina."
The women were joined by the imam of Turin, Abdellah Mechnoune.
"Having Western customs doesn't violate any rule in the Quran," Mechnoune said to reporters in condemning the murder.
Hina Saleem was found by police Aug. 11, 2006, wrapped in bags and buried in a shallow grave in her family's backyard in Brescia, a city in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, with a gash in her throat inflicted by a meat knife.
Her mother, in Pakistan at the time of the murder, acknowledged to police that her husband had killed Saleem who "did not behave like a good Muslim girl."
Saleem's father--a legal resident of Italy since 1989 who worked in a factory and also ran a kebab stand--was arrested Aug. 14, 2006. Unrepentant, he told police: "My daughter was a prostitute, living with that Italian. I killed her out of rage."
The prosecution alleges that Saleem's family chose to murder her after careful deliberations over her Western-style behavior and refusal to submit to an arranged marriage. Saleem lived with Giuseppe Tampini, a local carpenter, and secretly worked as a waitress in a bar.
In May, Moroccan activist Sbai petitioned the court to allow the Italian Association of Moroccan Women, along with her companion Tampini, to act as the injured parties in the case. Under Italian law, this meant that the group could collect damages and could provide a closing statement in court.
Duty to Victims
Sbai called the offer to act as plaintiff in the case "a duty towards Hina and the thousands of Hinas of this world."
The court, however, denied Sbai's request. The judge said the murdered woman and her killers were Pakistani, therefore a Moroccan women's organization had not directly suffered from the crime.
Tampini, as the boyfriend and cohabitant, will be permitted to act as a plaintiff when the trial reconvenes on Oct. 24.
Sbai, who's resided in Italy for 27 years, also sits on a board that advises Italy's Ministry of the Interior about Islam.
While promoting integration, Sbai seeks to highlight the best of North African cultures and Islamic teaching.
She says the case has fueled anti-Muslim sentiments.
At the preliminary hearings demonstrators with her group were focused on stopping any more slayings of a similar nature in Italy.
But two men also outside the courthouse held up a sign saying "Hina: Victim of Islam." Dounia Ettaib, vice president of the Italian Association of Moroccan Women, refuted any linkage of Islam with the murder.
"Hina's father applied his own inhuman, unreligious laws," she told Italy's newspaper L'Occidentale after the hearing.
Ettaib says that Islam cannot be blamed for the crime and that women such as Saleem are victims of terrorism and a false understanding of religion.
Ettaib was later assaulted and threatened by two young Moroccan men in Milan and now has a bodyguard.
Suspicions Spur Killings
"Honor killings" are committed against rape victims, women suspected of having premarital sex and women thought to have committed adultery, according to UNIFEM, the United Nations Development Fund for Women.
The women are typically killed by male relatives in an attempt to restore the family's honor, which they believe was violated. Such killings may also occur to settle property or financial disputes. They occur in Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Morocco and other Mediterranean and Gulf countries, immigrant communities in Europe and the United States, and in Brazil.
Honor killings are not exclusive to Islam. In the past year such crimes occurred in a Kurdish Yezidi community in Iraq and in a Christian family in Ramallah.
Honor killings are also part of Italy's own history, where the idea of "honor" was an admitted legal defense until 1981. Prior to its reversal, an article existed in the Italian Criminal Code that provided a reduced penalty of imprisonment of only three to seven years for a man who killed his wife, sister or daughter to vindicate his or his family's honor.
Honor killings have also shown up more recently in the news.
In London, a 70-year-old woman and her son were convicted July 26 for the honor killing of Surjit Kaur Athwal, who was murdered after threatening to get a divorce. Both the woman and her son face life sentences in prison. The verdict came a week after a British court concluded proceedings in the sexual torture and murder of a Kurdish woman, Banaz Mahmod, at the hands of her father and uncle, who both received life sentences. A third man involved in the honor killing was sentenced to 17 years in prison; two others are still at large.
In Italy, Giovanni Morabito, a 24-year-old member of a powerful Calabrian mafia clan, shot his unmarried sister in March 2006 for having a child out of wedlock and for apparently wanting to leave the family after earning her law degree.
"She had a child by a man she was not married to," Morabito told police. "It is a question of honor. I am not sorry. On the contrary, I am proud of what I did."
Angela Boskovitch is a freelance journalist based in Germany. She covers events in Europe and the Middle East as well as international development. She also has a blog covering agricultural policy and food traditions at Food-Travels.com.
And the EU has the audacity to criticize the Turkish Armed Forces when it interferes into politics to make sure that the militant Islamists behave themselves.
That's what happens when they are not controlled. @#%$ primitives.
Ahristos rapping:
Quote:a turkish majmun is raping!for nothing!
i hate rap is negros slums music
tam -tam aman aman
i protest for turks occupation
i wond to be free let me free!
tam -tam cyprus free! from Attilas
this is my rap song now
Quote:And the EU has the audacity to criticize the Turkish Armed Forces when it interferes into politics to make sure that the militant Islamists behave themselves.
Because militarism only promotes more militants and will be there to promote the isolated backwards society that leads to these kinds of actions. The key is education, social and economic improvements and more education.
If Turkey can use that miliary to enforce economic and social transitions instead of threatening, perhaps things will work out better in the long run?
Quote:Because militarism only promotes more militants and will be there to promote the isolated backwards society that leads to these kinds of actions.
That's totally new to me and quite ironic to hear from an anti-theist. The causes of militant Islam are much deeper than two minor Armed Forces interventions into politics (in 1997 and 2007).
Quote:If Turkey can use that miliary to enforce economic and social transitions instead of threatening, perhaps things will work out better in the long run?
The economy is left to the politicians. There is little that the Military or the bureaucracy can do in that department.
On the other hand, the Armed Forces and other secular institutions such as the High Courts, the Higher Education Board, the Higher Religious Board, the universities, the bureaucracy, trade unions, civil societal organizations etc. have already been using a combination of draconian measures and social policies to make sure Islamic fundamentalism is held at bay (More than mere economic development is needed to achieve the secularization of the ENTIRE society. Saudi Arabia attests to this):
Following the 1997 memorandum, the length of compulsory education was increased from 5 to 8 years. Draconian measures were instituted and are being applied to punish parents that refuse to send their kids, especially their daughters, to school to receive that secular and compulsory education.
Girls who wear headscarves are barred from receiving a university education.
Graduates of Imam-Hatip schools are barred from attending university faculties other than faculties of theology.
Every year, a dozen or two officers are expelled from the Armed Forces on the grounds that they are members of religious sects. It is very difficult if not impossible for religious nutcases to become professors or even academicians (except in some crappy, provincial universities), judges in High Courts, climb the ladder in much of the bureaucracy/businessmen/workers' associations etc.
There are frequent crackdowns on religious sects, followed by mass arrests.
Religious education and Koranic summer schools; their curricula and the teachers that teach there are strictly controlled by the Government.
The Higher Education Board does not recognize university degrees earned in Arab universities.
Large sums of funds are apportioned to make sure that smart kids coming from poor families get a scholarship in every educational level, at state-sponsored dormitories or at boarding schools, thereby, preventing them from falling into the hands of religious sects.
Millions of poor families are helped through the state's FAK-FUK-FUND (It sounds a bit weird in English ), by the municipalities and civil societal organizations. The state turns a blind eye when they build shanty houses over state property.
Ahristos rapping:
Quote:a turkish majmun is raping!for nothing!
i hate rap is negros slums music
tam -tam aman aman
i protest for turks occupation
i wond to be free let me free!
tam -tam cyprus free! from Attilas
this is my rap song now
Quote:That's totally new to me and quite ironic to hear from an anti-theist. The causes of militant Islam are much deeper than two minor Armed Forces interventions into politics (in 1997 and 2007).
I mean on a given people, not govt. I fully support the Turkish military in the wish to maintain utmost secularism in its state.
Quote:
Draconian measures were instituted and are being applied to punish parents that refuse to send their kids, especially their daughters, to school to receive that secular and compulsory education.
I mean the military working together with the politicians in building up the health centers, providing better infrastructure and facilities. What about the redistribution of land? I heard that that was one of the biggest problems in the Kurdistan area?
Quote:I mean the military working together with the politicians in building up the health centers, providing better infrastructure and facilities. What about the redistribution of land? I heard that that was one of the biggest problems in the Kurdistan area?
Meltdown, they are already doing that. Planting trees, helping build schools, health centers and infrastructure in every single military garrison area.
I don't want to hurt anyone's family, but many times, I wish that we Turks had chosen Christianity/Judaism or that heteredox versions such as Turkish Alewiism dominated Islamic interpretation. Just take a look at the world of Islam... Socially and economically developed countries are nowhere to be seen. Islam, or the way it is interpreted by its believers is the main reason...
Ahristos rapping:
Quote:a turkish majmun is raping!for nothing!
i hate rap is negros slums music
tam -tam aman aman
i protest for turks occupation
i wond to be free let me free!
tam -tam cyprus free! from Attilas
this is my rap song now
Quote:Meltdown, they are already doing that. Planting trees, helping build schools, health centers and infrastructure in every single military garrison area.
One more thing; that is among some other reasons why the Armed Forces always top opinion polls on the most trusted institutions.
Ahristos rapping:
Quote:a turkish majmun is raping!for nothing!
i hate rap is negros slums music
tam -tam aman aman
i protest for turks occupation
i wond to be free let me free!
tam -tam cyprus free! from Attilas
this is my rap song now
Quote:I don't want to hurt anyone's family, but many times, I wish that we Turks had chosen Christianity/Judaism or that heteredox versions such as Turkish Alewiism dominated Islamic interpretation. Just take a look at the world of Islam... Socially and economically developed countries are nowhere to be seen. Islam, or the way it is interpreted by its believers is the main reason...
Well, many of these countries were on their way towards betterment. Before the revolution, an Iranian friend told me that Iran was well on its way towards becoming a modern secular state. Beirut was considered an exotic capitol and would have rose even further had it not been for those unfortunate events that lead to its collapse... same can be said of nations from Egypt to Afghanistan.
Here in the US, many Muslim immigrants drive around it nice cars, own businesses and are well assimilated. They attend mosques but we never hear of such stories.
Islam is not the issue, its the poverty and the backwardness brought about by it.. If Turkey can bring that down and better itself economically, then the issue of radical Islam will wipe itself out. In the last century Turkey seems to have created an image of secularism and it can continue to expand upon it by improving itself.
Quote:Alewiism dominated Islamic interpretation.
Since enforced Atheism is no longer an option, I wouldnt mind Alb Muslims going 100% Bektashi.
Sheer barbarism!
), by the municipalities and civil societal organizations. The state turns a blind eye when they build shanty houses over state property. 
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