6 May, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Continuing on from my previous post, I am haunted by the image of 17-year-old Du’a Khalil Aswad, the woman on the video who had been lynched by a mob of men. The subject of “honor killings” is nothing new for me – in fact, I’m sure I’ve written about it on this blog before. But I’ve never seen it with my own eyes. And seeing it for myself has affected me in a visceral way. It has changed me in ways I am still trying to understand.

Images have the power to affect people in a way that words cannot. Think about images from the Vietnam War or the Iraq War that changed the tide of public opinion. Though honor killings are nothing new in Kurdish areas of Iraq, this event – captured on camera phones by men who hoped to use the footage to terrorize the women in their community – has mobilized Kurdish and Iraqi women and activists around the world. If this horrible, repulsive video footage is a catalyst for change, then perhaps this poor tortured woman will not have died in vain.

As I thought about Du’a and her brutal murder, I couldn’t help but think of the murder of Emmett Till, whose lynching in Mississippi – and the photographs of him that were published – ignited the Civil Rights Movement. I feel that this event could have a similar effect on people in the Middle East. I hope so.

While I can’t necessarily recommend watching the video that I linked to before [which only contains footage after Du'a had already been killed and not the actual killing], in some ways I think it should be shown on television and people should be forced to watch it. Many people living their comfortable lives in America and Europe cannot possibly imagine such horror. You might think you can imagine it – but trust me, seeing it is something else all together. I was not able to finish watching it, but what I did watch caused me to feel quite sick. I also had difficulty breathing and nearly had a panic attack. I’ve felt sad and depressed all day and rather than doing the pile of work that’s waiting for me, I’ve been writing about this instead. Pages and pages of writing. Writing is the only way I can work through how I’m feeling about this.

Apparently, there are many different videos of this horrible event circulating on the internet. The website of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation has links to several of the videos — including the actual murder, plus descriptions of what happens in each video. I have not watched any of these, nor do I plan to watch any of them.

The victim of this “honor killing” lived in the Kurdish region of Iraq and she was a member of the Yazidi religion. She was publicly lynched because she had run away from home and secretly eloped with an Arab Muslim man. From the website Kurdish Aspect:

The 17-year-old girl was taken away against her father’s will, thrown from a roof, dragged from behind a car, and after that, when she was still alive, concrete blocks were dropped on her head until she died. Her body was then thrown atop the village trash heap where it laid for several days, until Yazidi authorities gave the parents permission to claim their dead daughter’s body. Almost everything was recorded by mobile-phone video cameras, and the video was then circulated throughout Kurdistan towns and finally broadcast on the Internet and a number of foreign TV stations.

From the video, you can see that her body was stripped and mutilated. Unfortunately, these brutal killings of women happen frequently in certain regions of the world and are apparently common in these Kurdish regions of Iraq. The lynching of Du’a happened in public, in broad daylight and it was filmed – that is what sets it apart. Here is another account of the murder from the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation:

[After her elopment] she stayed with a local Yezidi tribal leader for five days until she was convinced to return to her village on the understanding that she had been ‘forgiven.’ She was abducted and brutally murdered in front of hundreds of men by her relatives — who stripped her body, beat and kicked her, and killed her by crushing her body with rocks and concrete blocks. These brutal and inhuman acts were filmed by the participants on their mobile phones and many of them have been circulating on the internet and from phone to phone. They show the participation of the police in this disgusting communal murder and the murderous excitement of the crowd as the girl’s uncle, brother and cousin comit the grisly murder.

From the website Kurdish Aspect:

Du’a was not the first victim of violence against women in Kurdistan, and unfortunately, she will not be the last. Be it within the Muslim or Yazidi communities, the violence against women has continued without interruption. One may state that this kind of violence exists even in Western communities, but let us not forget that groups do not sanction such violence in Western societies; rather, it is the act of a single individual and it is a crime that is severely punishable. Honor killings and lynchings like the one that took Du’a’s life are sanctioned by a large part of a community. The best evidence is that sequences of the video-recorded lynching show that the perpetrators of this crime aimed to make an example of it as a lesson to others.

It’s bad enough that this woman’s male family members murdered her. But not only that, a mob of men viewed this whole event as if it were entertainment. They filmed it with camera phones and jeered and encouraged it. And they did nothing to stop it. Any man who could watch something like that and condone it and not try to stop it has lost his humanity. A person who has no humanity, no empathy, no soul, is a frightening person indeed. The world would be a better place without these men. The world would be a better place if they had never existed at all. And a person who could watch something like this and do nothing cannot be salvaged. Once you’ve lost that essential spark that makes you a human being, there’s no getting it back.

What I can’t help but wonder is what life must be like for the women and little girls who live in this town. Were they inside their homes, listening to the screams of this girl, perhaps their friend, their daughter, their sister, a woman they saw on the street everyday? Did they hear their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands jeering and taking photos during this public lynching? What must it have been like to know that this was going on right outside your door? What would it be like to be a girl and to fear that if you do anything “improper” with a boy – or if you are even just accused of it – you won’t punished by being sent to your bedroom. No, you’ll be killed. I can’t even imagine how psychologically damaged the women who live in this region of the world must be.

The Kurdistan government, who originally did nothing in reaction to this event, have now stated – after their dirty little secrets were exposed to the world via the internet – that these men will be punished. We’ll see. In retaliation for this “honor killing,” 23 Yezidi men have been killed by Muslims. Read Amnesty International’s statement on all of these killings.

Links:

International Campaign Against Honour Killings

Sign the Petition

[tags]Du’a, Du’a Khalil Aswad, honor killings, honour killings[/tags]

1. Comments RSS

1. tom murray Says:

   May 6th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

   very good, i will try in my way to keep du’a khalil aswad name forever in the minds of the media. this is unacceptable as a human race, period.if we are not above sectarian divisions, than we might as well curl up and die. May the force be with you

2. SpliceGirl Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 2:56 am

   This type of killing will never end and pictures/footage of it being played in the Middle East will do nothing to stop the practice as you say it did with the Civil Rights movement with the photo’s of Emmett Till. But, I’ll get to why in a moment…

   I for one, as someone who makes a living in the film industry, know how powerful image is. I think footage like this should be played on every channel in every country to try and shock people into believing it is happening. I think one of the biggest mistakes in this country after 9/11 was NOT to play some of the most horrific footage, like shots of people jumping out of the World Trade Center as it smoldered and fell. This footage played in the European media but not here, to “protect” us. We needed to see how horrible it was. We needed to feel the unimaginable fear and sadness as we watched these people decide to die by jumping rather than by burning. They knew they were going to die, they were just choosing which way. We needed to see it because we needed to get ANGRY. We needed to see how horrific this was and to this day they should be playing that footage to continually remind us what happened that day. This is the triumph of Holocaust survivors and people like Simon Wiesenthal. THEY WILL NOT LET YOU FORGET WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM. YOU SHOULDN’T FORGET HOW HORRIBLE THESE THINGS ARE. Images like this, like of D’ua, are so horrific that it leaves an indeliable print on our minds to see it, real, moving, and desperately wanting to stop it. There is a reason they don’t release pictures of dead soldiers from the Iraq war or their flag covered coffins. Because it makes it REAL. Our technology information obsessed 21st century culture thirsts for INFORMATION but not for FEELING. We cocoon ourselves into safety by accepting what the media outlets WANT to serve us because we know that once we feel the pain and horror of something like the tragic death of D’ua we may be tempted to get off our asses and do something.

   BUT, back to my original thought which is that playing this footage in places like the Middle East will have no effect. The reason: because the majority of the women there LET IT HAPPEN. For all the women you write about who were most likely “listening” to what was going on…why didn’t they do anything? They may be oppressed but they still have souls. I would have rather died next to D’ua by standing up for her than to live a lifetime hearing her screams and knowing I did nothing. Once you can get the actual women who are being oppressed to start changing it nothing will change it. No amount of horrible footage. No amount of jail time or retribution. The change has to come from within and I do not believe most of these women are willing or ready to do this yet. Changing it by force will only make people more bitter and hostile and likely to do these things to more women for even lesser “offenses”. Don’t get me wrong, I think they should ALL be arrested, including those who listened and did nothing, and executed for murder but us plowing in there would be almost the WORST situation for these oppressed women. They have to want the change and the help to change it for it to even begin to take effect. Maybe I am coming off too harsh, but if they don’t start trying to help their fellow women then nothing can help them.

3. Anita Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

   This issue of whether or not to show the footage is an interesting one. There was intense debate among networks and laypersons on whether or not NBC should have shown the video tape of Cho. The jury is still out although the deed is done, but the thinking against it is that showing the video gave Cho the platform he was seeking. To a lesser extent, people talked about how the images might encourage someone else the way that Columbine was cited as a model for Cho. I’m not sure on which side I fall — I could not watch the video tape and to this day have not viewed the photos of Emmitt Till — but such opinions do give one things to think about.

   Regarding the statement that women let it happen, that made me cringe and yet I think I understand. Now that women are being mobilized in parts of Africa to say no to female mutilation, the practice is gaining notice in the world community and I understand is beginning to slow.

   “Resistence is the secret of Joy” Alice Walker

4. jen Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

   I’m not willing to lay more blame at the feet of the women than at the feet of the men who carried it out.

   Who’s more at fault? The dog who is beaten and doesn’t bite back? Or the one beating the dog?

   Ultimately, to my mind, the latter.

5. jen Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

   adding: ooops, probably shouldn’t have used “dog” as an example… but you get my meaning.

6. Anglofille Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 3:34 pm

   I don’t think any of us can really imagine what these women’s lives are like. In Dua’s town, the police force stood by and did nothing as a teenage girl was stoned to death. So not only are these women not safe from their own male relatives, they have *no one* to turn to for help. Most of us can probably not even imagine what this is like in our worst nightmares. So I don’t think we can expect them to act in an empowered way. In many parts of the world, women are told they are nothing but garbage. I’m sure if you’re told that enough, you start to believe it.

   That said, there are lots of feminist groups in the Middle East. In this Kurdish region of Iraq, protesters are taking to the streets over this brutal killing. Both women and men are standing up and making their voices heard. So that is a positive step.

   But I do agree that we cannot impose our Western feminist ideals on the women in the Middle East. Meaningful change must come from within. But what we can do is put pressure on these governments to pass laws that protect women and then uphold these laws. If that framework is in place, women will feel more comfortable speaking out. We can also support women’s groups in the Middle East and give them the resources they need to do their courageous work.

7. Anglofille Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

   I like this quote, SpliceGirl:

   Our technology information obsessed 21st century culture thirsts for INFORMATION but not for FEELING. We cocoon ourselves into safety by accepting what the media outlets WANT to serve us because we know that once we feel the pain and horror of something like the tragic death of D’ua we may be tempted to get off our asses and do something.

8. Anita Says:

   May 7th, 2007 at 9:56 pm

   http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/cms/

   A friend recommended support of this organization as a way to reach women internationally.

9. Vol Abroad Says:

   May 8th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

   But I do agree that we cannot impose our Western feminist ideals on the women in the Middle East. Meaningful change must come from within.

   I don’t agree…entirely. There are lots of things about the West that we shouldn’t impose on others, but some things like due process, individual civil rights and just not doing things like what happend to D’ua are important values that we should share.

   A lot of blame can put at the feet of the British empire, but they did at least bring a sense of the rule of law and ended – by force often – such despicable non-Western practices as suttee

   Of course, the sad thing about the current situation in Iraq – and in my opinion the saddest thing – is that we’re in absolutely no position to preach positive Western values when we’re not upholding them ourselves.

10. Anita Says:

    May 8th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

    Goodness knows I’m not going to defend the British empire. And at this point in history I’m not sure what our (American) values are.

11. Kate Says:

    June 22nd, 2007 at 1:46 am

    When I read it reminds me alot of northen european/[rus]vikings/russian regular sacrifice of women back in the old days,only here the arabs were observing it and making accounts with some distance and shock.Funny now how history repeats itself and swaps.

    http://www.uib.no/jais/v003ht/03-001-025Montgom1.htm

12. Chris Says:

    June 29th, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    “Any man who could watch something like that and condone it and not try to stop it has lost his humanity.”

    And there is nothing but silence regarding those who allowed Dua’s execution. After the flurry of articles, the NBC and CNN media attention, and letter writing which has presumably gone unnoticed by recipients, there is nothing but silence.