Save Bita from an honour killing

The ever busy IKWRO (the force behind International Coalition Against Honour Killings) has yet another important fight on their hands.
Our help is needed for Bita Ghaedi, who has been on hunger strike for 22 days now since being refused asylum by the UK Government and told she would be deported.
Since Bita’s arrival in London, she has been imprisoned at Holloway prison and twice detained at the infamous Yarl's Wood. More on that at http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/5000338.Petition_launched_to_save_hunger_striking_Iranian_from_forced_return_to_Iran/.
IKWRO (see http://www.ikwro.org.uk/ for more) believes Bita faces a severe risk of falling victim to an 'honour' killing if returned to Iran. She’s from a very traditional family in an area where 'honour' killings are common and the killers unlikely to face any serious repercussions.
Do the right thing and also give a UK politician a chance to be human for once.
Go to http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/33778/sign.html where you’ll find a petition stating:
We, the undersigned ask the UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband to personally intervene to ensure Bita Ghaedi is NOT forced to return to Iran, where it is certain she would be arrested and in physical danger under the current regime.
It’ll take you less than a minute, and could save a life.

Buried alive, meanwhile UK government buries the evidence

I was alerted to another gruesome Turkish ‘honour killing’ story by my wife, who read it yesterday on a Hungarian website. It may well have been in the UK press, but if so I missed it. Thankfully, the excellent International Campaign Against Honour Killings have the facts at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?q=node/4272
In brief, Turkish police found the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive in December by relatives as punishment for talking to boys. The girl was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
The postmortem revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.
An informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.
Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. The girl's mother was arrested but was later released.
Official figures show more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.
Also on the ICAHK website is an appeal for petition signatories protesting funding cuts to IKWRO, an organisation based in London which works to help women and girls who speak Kurdish, Farsi, Dari, Turkish and Arabic in the UK. IKWRO runs the ICAHK website, deals with thousands of calls every year and offers advocacy and advice in cases of domestic violence, forced marriage and 'honour'-based violence (HBV).
Sadly, while receiving praise from the police and the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU), it is doubly a victim of funding cuts. Firstly, a grant for a Kurdish outreach worker was not renewed by the FMU, and secondly, the UK government, in breach of its own agreement, rescinded a grant for campaign workers after it had been granted.
The 'Honour Network Helpline' (a project by Karma Nirvana, which operates with IKWRO's collaboration) may also have to restrict services and may even close due to lack of support . This though taking 6,702 calls between April and September, and even though the reported rate of HBV and forced marriage in the UK is increasing.
http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?q=node/4081 is the link if you want to know more, You can also link to petitions protesting what sounds awfully like decent folk being put out of business due to private talks between government and faith-bigoted QUANGOs who’d like the cash themselves for a spot more evangelising.

Under a frog's arse.. but still kicking

I’ve had a couple of minor setbacks this week. Nothing serious – just the usual petty stuff you get by upsetting Manx folk with the strange notion they’re competent, dedicated professionals.
So, I took a look at the latest on the ICAHK website (see sidebar) – best way I know to put your tiny troubles and attempts at speaking out against ruritanian twaddle into a world perspective.
There I found an open letter to Mahmoud Abbas from Nahid Abu T’eima, who is apparently Head of Production at the Bethlehem studio of something called the Ma’an Network; originally from Gaza she now lives and works in the West Bank with her children.
The Hungarians have an expression 'Under a frog's arse down a coal mine', as a way of signifying the world is so loaded against you things just couldn't get any worse. That's got to be close to where a Palestinian woman is any day of the week.
Amongst other things, Nahid says:

‘I am writing to you President Abbas because you are in charge, and you will be asked for an explanation as to why tens of women are being killed by their family members every year. You can stop these “honor” killings with a stroke of your pen and tell our families that there is no honor in killing. Our noble Prophet Muhammad was quoted as saying, “Every individual is responsible for his subjects,” so you too must take responsibility. No more soft law for killers.’

‘….Palestinians write about the steadfastness and courage of our women, they call them the guardian of Palestinian culture; it is nice talk. While writers write Palestinian courts have passed 70 laws related to the printing of currency; they have not passed a single one on family law or the personal status of women. Mr President, we are fed up with being fuel. We are fed up with people killing our women and boasting that they put an end to the shame of a family. We are fed up with no one questioning the hollowness of these boasts. We are fed up with explanations of honor.’

’….I - we - are infidels, non believers, in our own feeble society. We are fed up with having a Women’s Affairs Ministry which does not demand each time a woman is killed by her kin a halt to the pagan slaughter of females. We are fed up with our weakness and defeat by a heritage that legalizes our killing.’

Spike Milligan, during one depressive mood, memorably complained the BBC were treating him ‘like an outcast in a leper colony’. Compared to the alienation of any half-bright Palestinian woman (and mixing my comedic references to pull in the Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’ sketch here), he had it easy.
I’m not sure how any of us would cope with being dismissed as unimportant by not just militaristic neighbours with US backing who can bulldoze your home at will but even the official ‘opposition’ in your home country – unless, of course, you’re willing to either strap on a bomb belt or breed kids who will.
Some people, it seems, do. Not only that, they have the courage to buttonhole one of the sods responsible in public and say, in effect, ‘Oy, muppet, stop fannying about and get this sorted!’
Read the whole thing at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?name=News&file=article&sid=3544 and get inspired.

Remember Du'a Khalil Aswad

Two years ago today Du'a Khalil Aswad , a girl of 17 from the minority Kurdish Yezidi religious group, was stoned to death by a group of eight or nine men in the presence of a large crowd in the town of Bashika, near the city of Mosul, northern Iraq.
Du'a Khalil Aswad's murder is said to have been committed by relatives and other Yezidi men because of her relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy and her absence from her home for one night. Her death by stoning took some 30 minutes and was recorded on video film, which was then widely distributed on the internet. The film shows members of local security forces present but failing to intervene or arrest those responsible.
In remembrance of Du’a, the International Coalition Against Honour Killings is making 7th April each year a day of action.
This year they have asked the public to contact the the Kurdistan Regional Government asking what progress there has been in finding and prosecuting Du’a’s killers, and what they intend to do to reduce the rate of ’honour’ killings in Kurdistan. There have been at least 300 other victims since Du’a’s death.
In the UK you can do this by e-mail to uk@krg.org or by letter to

KRG Representation in the United Kingdom
Winchester House,
8th Floor 259-269 Old Marylebone Road
London
NW1 5RA

But Kurdistan is not the only culprit. For example when NATO forces hand regional power to traditionalists as a means of sidelining the Taliban the first effect is increased violence against women, often justified by religious courts. And Channel 4’s recent Unseen World programme on Turkey revealed around 200 ‘honour killings’ in the last year - this in what is effectively an EU country!
Amongst recent victims in other countries there have also been at least two British citizens, but the UK government did nothing. Perhaps the victims were neither white, rich nor photogenic enough, or perhaps our politicians just think a tankful of petrol means more to us than a human life.
Then again, the phenomena is coming closer than that too. An International Womens Day conference in London this year heard that a hotline for victims of honour crimes and forced marriages set up by Cleveland Police in November 2007 had taken over 300 calls, while even sleepy Cambridgeshire cops averaged 30 calls per month when they did the same.
I'm sick of the way that when a dog gets mistreated Manx folk react like it's a war crime, yet we've turned a blind eye to domestic violence and child neglect which can even lead to death for decades because it's a 'tradition'.
So where does it stop? In future years is burning your kid alive for wearing make-up or answering back going to be passed off as 'tradition'?
Actually, it's not so far off that now, and I'm not talking about new residents or minority religions either.
Just a few months ago there was a tragic case involving friends of my small daughter. Their mother was self-harming badly and in serious danger of topping either herself or her kids due to the mental cruelty of their fundamentalist throwback of a dad. Not wanting to inconvenience a 'well respected' churchgoer, Manx social services did the obvious - sectioned the mum and left the kids with Dad. As if he even noticed their existence due to his 'preaching commitments'.
The MHK Quintin Gill showed the way a couple of months back, introducing a Bill to end an anomaly which, bizarrely, meant female genital mutilation was not previously a crime on the Isle of Man.
If enough of us speak up we can stop all this faith-based lunacy, before it leads to a local tragedy even our courts and social workers cannot hide from the world.

Burn resources and stop honour killings

It's no secret that I am contemptuous of the increasingly evangelical tone of environmentalists.
This is fundamentalism by the back door. No problem with proper scientific evidence and debates, but nagging, finger-pointing, tokenistic crap like this Friday's big switch-off doesn't impress me.
I'd be far more impressed with an approach that recognises the ability of science and human ingenuity to get us out of this alleged mess instead of cheap Frankenstein comparisons and, in general, frankly anti-scientific, anti-human twaddle that rants, eyes glazed, about a future Dies Irae like Fred Phelps on crack.
So never mind self-righteously and pointlessly switching your lights off this Friday: do something useful instead.
Unreported World (Channel 4, 7.30 PM) will carry a vital report on Honour Killings in Turkey - reportedly 200 this year already and rising. It gets worse too. Seems the outside chance of getting prosecuted for murdering your own daughters and sisters has Turkish fundies so worried they're 'persuading' their kin to commit suicide instead.
Scum!!
You should watch this programme. You could even read up on it in advance by following the link in the sidebar here to the International Campaign Against Honour Killings website.
I don't care how many lightbulbs you then burn actually doing the right thing for another human being instead of wittering about recycling nappies either. Because I live in a human-centred world, and I'd rather burn out than be 120 in any world run by evangelical halfwits, whatever green label they hide their misogynism behind.

Stop Honour Killings

I'm sick to the back teeth of armchair humanists who'd rather waste time arguing with Christians about how many angels could dance on a pinhead - if there were angels - than stopping human rights abuse caused or excused by religious 'thought'.
Put your poxy Dawkins or Harris tomes down and look at the International Campaign Against Honour Killings site at http://www.stophonourkillings.com/index.php instead.
Look, for example, at the story from September 27th about women being buried alive in Pakistan.
Now get off your fat, pontificating arses and send an e-mail to some Pakistani officials.
There - isn't that better?