Murdering free spirit

The murder of two teenage girls, aged 15 and 16, along with their mother, in Gilgit is highly deplorable. On June 23, in Chilas, the three were shot by the mother’s stepson and four of his friends. The alleged cause for the provocation of their murder was the spread of a six-month-old video in the community, of the girls dancing in the rain. The sheer backwardness that this incident displays is incomprehensible. Five men took the lives of three innocent women for dancing in the rain, allegedly because it hurt the family’s “honour”.

Indeed, it really does feel like we live in primitive times, before the world was introduced to law and order, and civilised behaviour. These men took precious lives away simply because they felt threatened about other people’s perceptions of their family — over their action of dancing in the rain, which is often an expression of one’s free spirit. What other people thought became more important than their relatives’ lives. It seems that the norm in this society is barbarity. We must demand that the police and other law- enforcement agencies take these men to task.

But that is not where it should end — because this is just one example of the many similar murders that occur for the same reason. The mentality of killing in the name of “honour” must be dealt with and reformed in order to end this system of restoring family “honour” through killing people. The rule of law must be firmly established in areas where such incidents are prevalent — primarily, in the rural areas of all provinces. Those who propagate such thinking must be made to understand that there is no link between murder and family honour and that women of the family, too, have a right to be free-spirited. Once a person commits a murder, he is only a murderer and not a keeper of family dignity. Until this is enforced and men who violate the law are punished and made examples out of, crimes of “honour” will continue to pervade through generations.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2013.

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