Pakistan/India: There is no honour in killing… End the culture of impunity

Posted on June 7, 2014 by beenasarwar
HK-Iqbal - Farzana pic

Iqbal holds up a picture of his wife, Farzana Parveen, killed outside the Lahore High Court. Photo: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

On the murder of Farzana Parveen in Pakistan and the two Dalit girls in India – something I wrote last week, published in The News and in The Times of India blog

There is no honour in killing

End the culture of impunity

Beena Sarwar

Last Tuesday, May 27, two crimes that shocked the world took place, one in the morning in Lahore, Pakistan and the other at night in Uttar Pradesh, India. Three young women – two of them just girls, really, were killed in these incidents. A fourth casualty was the unborn child of the five months pregnant woman in Pakistan. Continue reading →

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There is no ‘honour’ in killing – Sept 2008, sadly still relevant

Posted on May 30, 2014 by beenasarwar
samia sarwar

Not just the ‘poor’ and ‘uneducated’ – Samia Sarwar was murdered in her lawyer’s office by a man abetted by her own mother, a doctor.

The outrage against the murder of Farzana Parveen outside the Lahore High Court reminded me of something I wrote in September 2008, published in The News, Pakistan and in The Hindu, India, below. Farzana was going to the court to testify that she had married her husband of her own choice (defending him against kidnapping charges her family had brought against him). Such murders for ‘honour’ are common in the region. In Pakistan, the situation is exacerbated by the Qisas and Diyat law which enables the perpetrators to literally get away with murder (as Raymond Davis did). This case is particularly horrific because of where it happened and because the woman was three months pregnant.  See booklet by Hassam Qadir Shah: Honour killing-criminal procedures-Hassam Qadir Shah-Shirkat Gah (2002, PDF) 

There is no ‘honour’ in killing, Sept 2008

[Note: in my published article, I had mixed up the names, corrected below – the correct names are Saima Waheed and Samia Sarwar]  Continue reading →

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Iqbal Haider, we’ll miss your ‘groove’

Posted on November 19, 2012 by beenasarwar

Iqbal Haider: A firm believer in secular values.

 My article for The News on Sunday, Nov 18, 2012 – in which I forgot to mention the resolution Iqbal Haider tried to get the Senate to pass against the cold-blooded murder of young Saima Sarwar in the office of Hina Jillani at the behest of her own parents, simply because she wanted a divorce from her abusive husband. Some senators from FATA physically attacked him for it (See my article ‘There is no ‘honour’ in killing).

 Beena Sarwar

The protests outside Karachi Press Club will be all the poorer without Senator Syed Iqbal Haider’s energising presence. Activists promoting any good cause could count on him to be there — whether it was justice for Mukhtaran Mai, protest against Shia killings, or a call for peace between India and Pakistan. Continue reading →

Filed under: Human rights | Tagged: , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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