Yesterday there was a court ruling about a case which has captured the attention of Canadians. The parents and brother of 3 murdered girls and their step-mom were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
The murders were carried out a couple of years ago. The parents and brother pushed a car that carried the 4 women into a canal. All 4 women drowned.
The reason? Licentious behaviour. The girls, aged 19, 17, and 13 weren't modest enough for the Afghani parents. So they killed them.
There's tons more info on the case here:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Christie+Blatchford+There+honour+shameless+murders/6070834/story.html
The family moved from Afghanistan to Canada. They're a wealthy family. There was a dad, a mom, the older brother who helped to kill them. The three sisters who died, 2 other sisters and a brother. And the dad's first wife who they brought in a couple months later as a cousin who was going to "help with the housework" or something.
The oldest daughter, Zainab was rebellious. She hung out with boys, she wore makeup and clothes that showed her body. She ran away, to a women's shelter. She got married to someone her parents didn't approve of and then had the marriage annulled. Her behaviour was pretty wild in some ways. Not so wild in others. Not so far off the beaten path of teenage-hood.
The second sister, Sahar, was rebellious too. She hung out with boys, took tarty pics of herself with her cell phone. She dated boys.
The third daughter, Geeti was 13. She asked teachers and schools for help, saying they were going to kill her and then recanted in front of her parents. Pictures of her make her look like a child, not an adolescent. She was a little girl.
The first wife, Rona, was 52. She was barren. She wanted to leave her marriage. She was afraid of her husband. Afraid he would kill her.
All 4 of these women were afraid. Justifiably.
There's a sense that the system let them down. They knew they were in danger, and asked for help, from schools and friends and social workers. They were afraid of being killed and they said so.
We are so politically correct as a culture, so stupidly liberal, that we want to believe that every culture has legitimacy even if it isn't our own. And here's the thing. They don't all have the same legitimacy. Some cultural ways, traditional ways, are just barbaric and evil and repressive. Some are just wrong. We need to say so.
Who decides? Well if you don't feel capable, I can do it, thanks.
These honour killings were that kind of barbaric, primitive, evil thing. This man, their father, obviously the mind behind the crimes, clearly felt that he had the rights to power and control over their sexuality. They were killed because he couldn't control their sexuality.
I seriously hope they put him in jail with a thousand other men and he learns something about sexuality there.