May 17, 2008
How camera phones have fuelled frenzy of honour killing in Iraq
The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Independent reports.
"A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.
The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.
Since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of women suffering violence – it is almost always the women rather than the men who suffer retribution – as a result of some aspect of their love life being pictured on mobile phones.
In 2007, at least 350 women, double the figure for the previous year, suffered violence as a result of mobile phone "evidence", according to Amanj Khalil of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, citing figures compiled by women's organisations and the police directorate in Sulaymaniyah.
The true figure is probably much higher. Bodies are buried in the mountains. Violence is concealed. Whole extended families and clans feel a genuine sense of shame because of some supposed act of immorality."
Image from Tree-in-the-Sea.
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