Saturday 6 February 2010

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a Kurdish outreach worker was not renewed by the FMU, and secondly, the UK government, in breach of its own agreement, rescinded a grant for campaign workers after it had been granted.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.

1 comment:

Joanne said...

Cheers mate! :-)