The writer is a lawyer and a member of the law faculty at LUMS. She is a graduate of the University of Cambridge
Honour is a complex virtue and ideal. It denotes integrity, respect and social stature, and shapes our own sense of value in society. Honour is earned through virtuousness, sacrifice, service and good work. But in our society, there is honour in murder, not of an aggressor or a tyrant, but of an innocent, often vulnerable young girl, who may have exercised her right to marry of her will. This is honour killing and the law, at times, rewards those who kill in the name of honour.
Honour killings happen each day in Pakistan, amidst the indifferent silence of households or, at times, before the closed gates of a Court of Justice. Statistics vary on the number of women murdered for honour each year in Pakistan. The Ministry of Law reports a figure of less than 900 such deaths in the last two years. The Human Rights Commission claims that over 1,000 honour killings occurred in Pakistan in 2014 alone.
The screening of Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s Oscar-winner documentary at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat last week cast the spotlight on honour killing, and inspired our Premier Mian Nawaz Sharif to unequivocally state: “There is no honour in killing. Honour killing is against Islam.”
For the prime minister to have spoken out categorically against honour killing is significant. Many, however, have been left wondering whether such political condemnation will translate into the legal and administrative changes necessary for putting an end to the impunity that surrounds honour killings. The criminal law recognises honour killing as qatl-e-amd and in no way treats the arguable play of honour as a mitigating circumstance. Lacunae in the law, however, often permit perpetrators to go scot-free.
Legislators have, in the past, amended the law, but with little consequence on the incidence of honour killings. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 2005 recognised the specific nature of qatl-e-amd committed in the name of honour and introduced special exceptions to the scheme of applicable penalties: the accused wali (legal heir) of the victim could not pardon himself of the murder under general principles of qisas; provincial governments no longer had the power to suspend or remit a sentence awarded in a case of honour killing, the court was provided the benefit of minimum sentencing guidelines in honour killing cases where qisas could not be enforced.
The real problem, as Ms Chinoy rightly points out, is that the application of Islamic remedies of qisas and diyat creates a loophole of forgiveness in the law governing honour killing, and allows individuals, who are often co-conspirators or instigators, to pardon the murderer. Under Islamic law, murder or qatl-e-amd is an offence against the person. The legal heirs of a deceased victim, therefore, have the eventual say in whether to pardon or punish an accused. But is it reasonable to award such discretion in cases of honour killing to individuals who may have, in some way, supported or abetted the crime or are vulnerable to coercion? No, it is not. The protagonist in Chinoy’s film fell victim to such pressure and was eventually forced to pardon the man — her father — who had attempted to kill her.
Honour killing must be removed from the scope of the qisas and diyat laws. The amendment to the law should not be too controversial. Pursuant to section 311 of the PPC, courts already have the power to sentence a person convicted of honour killing to death or imprisonment for life, notwithstanding any pardon extended to the accused by the victim’s wali. Reportedly, the power is rarely exercised. The only solution lies in entirely closing down the “loophole of forgiveness” in the law, by entirely exempting honour killing from the application of qisas and diyat. The Anti-Honour Killings Laws Bill, 2014, passed last year by the Senate, proposed the necessary amendment to the law: that qisas in cases of qatl-e-amd committed in the name of honour cannot in any instance be compounded. The bill, however, lapsed by reason of delay in introduction before the National Assembly. With the developing political consensus against honour killing, will the bill be revived? Will the government introduce its own version of the amendment or will the stir pass away without much consequence?
Published in The Express Tribune, March 1st, 2016.
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