So-called 'honour' killings in Pakistan continue to plague the nation, the latest victim of the crime is a couple killed in the Charsadda district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
According to Dawn, the 21-year-old man and 18-year-old woman were murdered for 'honour' in the new mathera area of Charsadda district on Sunday.
Families of the victims registered cross First Information Reports (FIRs) blaming each other for the killing. Dawn reported that the police have started further investigations into the incident.
Earlier in June, a man in Gujranwala was killed for expressing a desire to marry a woman and asking her family for her hand. Pakistan Daily quoting the statement of the victim's brother said that Rizwan (victim) had sought permission from the girl's father to marry his daughter. But the girl's father, Tariq Yaqub, murdered Rizwan, chopped up his body into pieces and dumped them into a canal.
Pakistan accounts for about a fifth of the 5,000 'honour' killings globally each year. Observers have noted that violence is not just meted out to women only but equally threatens men's life as well.
Such criminal acts in Pakistan are justified on the stance that when men and women commit adultery or involve in elopement, it becomes incumbent upon the family to restore 'honour' by killing them. Certain cultural traditions and social arrangements in various Pakistani households are used to support this mindset in an effort to maintain the family's 'honour' and do not regard it as an act of violence.
These killings have claimed over 70 live in the rural parts of Sindh during the first six months of 2019, according to official figures in the local media.
Rights activists say that such killings, like any other act of violence, threaten a person's life and liberty to exercise their right to life. They maintain that no one should be allowed to take law into their own hands and make decisions on their own, creating chaos and public disorder.
"To end honour killings advocacy must stop focusing on storytellers and create means to bring change within communities... Current advocacy on honour killings elevates storytellers as saviour nothing for victims or grassroots moral change," said Rafia Zakaria, a popular Pakistani writer and critic.
( With inputs from ANI )
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