Kurdish authorities said they have launched a public awareness campaign to address the soaring rate of honor killings in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.What's disturbing is how little attention this gets from the media and women's rights groups, especially in the United States.
In the past four months, 27 Kurdish women were killed for being involved in illicit relationships. This is in addition to the 97 women who tried to commit suicide, Human Rights Minister Yusuf Mohamed Aziz was quoted as saying by the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi on Tuesday.
Aziz said the Kurdistan government formed a committee to combat various forms of violence against women, honor killings -- also referred to as "killings to wash disgrace away" -- being the most flagrant.
Awareness campaigns have been launched, a human rights course has been included in the school syllabus, and Islamic preachers have condemned the practice as un-Islamic.
The tradition of honor killing arises from the societal conviction that honor is more important than human life. It is widely practiced among Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey, in tribal Pakistan, and some Arab societies.
You would think an organization such as NOW would be mentioning this more frequently.
I guess they have other, more pressing, agendas.
The statistics are horrifying.
According to its 2007 report, violence against Kurdish women rose 18 percent between March and May 2006. Statistics showed that in the first quarter of 2007, 15 women were killed with blunt tools, 87 by fire, and 16 from gunshot wounds. In the second quarter, the figures were eight, 108, and 21, respectively.H/T: Judith Apter Klinghoffer at George Mason's History News Network, who has more.
A report by Kurdistan's Human Rights Ministry said the number of women who committed suicide by self-immolation (setting themselves on fire) was 36 in 2005 and rose to 133 in 2006.
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