So-called honour killings in Pakistan continue to plague the nation, the latest victim being a man in Gujranwala, who was killed for expressing a desire to marry a woman and asking her family for her hand.
According to Pakistan Daily, the victim's brother, in an FIR, said that Rizwan 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.
When asked about the whereabouts of Rizwan, he simply acted strange and refused to admit that the boy had come to their house. The victim's brother demanded a fair investigation from the police and asked to recover his brother's body.
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.
"Karo Kari (honour killing) is driven by a complex interplay of factors like patriarchy, feudal culture, complicit role of the state institutions and law enforcement agencies, and a web of vested sociopolitical interests," said Asma Yunus, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Sargodha.
According to experts, honour killings have a strong connection with a belief that society permits killing a person if he tries to transgress the limits set by its decades-long traditions, seeking no legal intervention. This kind of belief has also made the crime slipped out of the hands of the police as it deprives them of the ability to save the victim's life from the clutches of the offenders, reported Pakistan Daily.
A police report revealed that 126 people were suspected of being involved in honour killings in the Sindh province of Pakistan between January 2019 and January 2020, out of 32 are still being investigated.
Honour 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 honour 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 in his own hands and make decisions on his 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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