'Honour Killings' in Pakistan and Compliance of ... - Aurat Foundation

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motive 29 . The new law defined honour killings as voluntary suicide. Also, family members who encourage another member of the family to commit a murder or to commit suicide will be punished. Those who encourage children to commit a crime will be punished more severely. ‘Honour Killings’ and Pakistani Law In Pakistan, honour killings have regularly come for consideration before the courts for years. Until 2004, there was no specific legislation dealing with the issue. As a result, there is a huge body of jurisprudence pre-2004 that has been providing narrow interpretations and discriminatory judgments for a long time. It is important to take a cursory look at how the law on honour killings un-folded in order to understand and appreciate how the courts deal with honour killing cases currently. It is important also to have this information to be able to analyse and see whether there has been modification and advancement in the mindset of the judiciary while over-seeing such cases. Honour Killing Cases pre 2004 In pre-partition cases, as Warraich 30 notes, it was a norm that a husband could benefit from the exception of ‘grave and provocation plea’ if he killed his wife or her alleged lover if they were guilty of adultery. The courts were quite willing to give this plea a broad interpretation. In the initial post-independence years, court continued to give token sentences to perpetrators of alleged ‘honour killings’. Yasmeen Hassan notes that the benefit of the plea was extended to men, giving them authority to 29 Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices – 2004: Turkey, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, at 13 (Feb. 28, 2005), available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2004/41713.htm 30 ‘Honour Killings and the Law in Pakistan’, Sohail Akbar Warraich, ‘Honour’ Crimes, Paradigms, And Violence Against Women, Edited by Lynn Welchman, Sara Hossain, Oxford University Press, 2005 27
monitor women’s movements and kill them if they defied the social order 31 . Post-independence, much of the debate related to the issue of Islamisation of the laws, specifically the criminal law relating to murder and hurt, 32 which directly relates to the prosecution of honour killings. The Qisas and Diyat Ordinance was promulgated to address the supposedly anti-Islamic elements of criminal law. The law made a number of changes, as summarised by Warraich 33 , followed by a discussion based on the effects of these changes. Firstly all cases of death at the hands of a person were now termed as one of four categories of ‘murder,’ removing all previous categories e.g. manslaughter. Secondly, sentences were given not on the basis of the intensity or facts of the crime but on the form of proof of murder and the relationship of the offender to the deceased. There are different requirements for the proof for qisas (retribution i.e. death sentence) i.e. full confession to the satisfaction of the court or requisite witness. If these requirements are not fulfilled, the accused will be liable for sentencing under tazir (sentence of imprisonment or death sentence under normal law). Certain relatives were already exempted by the law as being only liable for diyat (giving compensation), but with the court’s discretion to impose a maximum sentence of fourteen years of imprisonment. Thirdly, the law stated that qisas shall not be enforceable where, according to the injunctions of Islam, it is not applicable. Finally, the law now formally allowed the heirs of the murder victim or the victim of any form of bodily 31 ‘Honour Killings and the Law in Pakistan’, Sohail Akbar Warraich, ‘Honour’ Crimes, Paradigms, And Violence Against Women, Edited by Lynn Welchman, Sara Hossain, Oxford University Press, 2005 32 Gul Hassan judgment 33 28
Page 2 and 3: A Pilot Study on: ‘Honour Killing
Page 4: Table of Contents Preface 1 Introdu
Page 8 and 9: Preface Elimination of all negative
Page 10 and 11: the nature and extent of its compli
Page 12 and 13: Introduction The Criminal Law (Amen
Page 14: formalised by the State and ‘lega
Page 17 and 18: Gender is one of the organisational
Page 19 and 20: their rights were achieved on paper
Page 21 and 22: elatives), in effect excluding all
Page 24 and 25: 3. “Honour Killings”: their Pre
Page 26 and 27: patrilineage 17 . From this follows
Page 28 and 29: compensation negotiated to end a di
Page 30: divorced or excommunicated, an act
Page 33: Article 340 of the Jordanian Penal
Page 37 and 38: mitigation, compensation for the he
Page 39 and 40: The discretion of the court to deci
Page 41 and 42: down for such cases. This applies t
Page 43 and 44: to properly determine the issue bef
Page 45 and 46: Table 1: Number & Percentages of Ca
Page 47 and 48: the police stations are not even eq
Page 49 and 50: Findings of the Research The findin
Page 51 and 52: When asked about the lack of filing
Page 53 and 54: Gujrat Gujrat also shows a similar
Page 55 and 56: community. Perhaps this has been on
Page 57 and 58: eporting it will do when registerin
Page 59 and 60: Jillani reiterated Justice Abbasi
Page 61 and 62: death and it was subsequently disco
Page 63 and 64: Lahore High Court The Lahore High C
Page 65 and 66: meditation falling under the defini
Page 67 and 68: for conservative and biased interpr
Page 70 and 71: 6. Perspective of the Community Whi
Page 72 and 73: mindset and existing confining soci
Page 74 and 75: even if cases are brought to them,
Page 76 and 77: Role of the Community It is general
Page 78 and 79: court settlement is preferred. Such
Page 80 and 81: 7. Conclusion and Main Findings It
Page 82 and 83: 6. There are also problems with the
Page 84 and 85:
12. These precedents are not necess
Page 86 and 87:
hold through these illegal forms of
Page 88:
24. The police can play a very nega
Page 91:
The police system is in dire need o
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