Good and Bad News on the Dis-Honor Killing Front

Good:

AMMAN - Legal experts and religious leaders insist that there should be no exemption for so-called honour crimes under the law.

“A crime is a crime. There is no such thing as honour crimes. All people are equal before the law,” Justice Minister Ayman Odeh said on Thursday.

When they occur, honour killings are usually committed by one family member against another, supposedly in the name of defending the honour of the family, but in the eyes of the law, these crimes are perceived as crimes against humanity and dealt with accordingly, the minister said in an interview with The Jordan Times.

Bad:

Just hours after the minister gave the interview Thursday, two such murders were reported in the Amman and Karak governorates.

“He was told that his sister was having an affair with a man in a Ghor Safi village and killed her based on suspicions, claiming that his sister tarnished his family’s honour,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A police spokesman told AFP that the defendant stabbed his sister in front of a group of people, who “did not prevent the crime, but later tried to rescue the woman” and failed.

Meanwhile, Hadidi said another woman was murdered in a separate incident in Amman yesterday, but did not elaborate on the circumstances of the crime.

Last year, 18 persons were reportedly murdered in Jordan in so-called honour crimes, according to official figures.

So where are we this year? 14 including the 16 week old fetus that died with it’s mother Thursday, and the twenty week old fetus of a previous victim. 12 if we only count people who have seen the light of day before they died.

Hhhm, and another murder in a separate incident in Amman. Do you ever hear a scream in your neighborhood and wonder if you’ll read about it the next day?