We have another alleged “honor killing” in Europe. Rokstan M. is a woman who was gang raped by three Syrian soldiers and fled for freedom in the West. Her family however treated her as unclean and guilty for being gang raped. She reportedly feared being killed by her father and brothers. The young pregnant woman was found stabbed to death and her Syrian father is believed to have fled back to Syria. Police are also seeking her brothers who are believed to have participated in the savage murder. Rokstan wrote on social media shortly before her death that “I am awaiting death. But I am too young to die.”
Rokstan was employed as an interpreter on a book project on Syrian refugees. She recounted before her death that “I was taken by three men. Ever since that time my family has regarded me as unclean. My mother and my brothers mistreat me. They say that I deserve to die.” She lived at Papatya, a crisis center for girls and young women and the director, Eva Kaiser, believes Rokstan was killed by her family “because she was no longer a virgin and was raped in Syria.”
Her body was found behind a living area for Syrian refugees in Berlin. The father appears to have fled to Turkey and likely back to Syria — leaving his wife who is under investigation in Germany. The mother denies involvement but friends of the Rokstan say that the mother threatened her and once allegedly tried to hire a hitman to kill her.
There have been at least 129 documented honor killings in Germany in the last 20 years. Police documented an average 13 honor killings a year in the country and tie the large number to the 1.5 million refugees, mainly from Muslim-majority countries.
Mike,
The Congress has been busier with social issues concerned with women’s reproductive systems than they are legislating the rest of the county’s problems. Authoritarianism is a blight on humanity.
Annie
2:40 is quite good.
It is worldwide. And it is here. The attacks on Planned Parenthood are evidence.
Mike, I can only imagine the carnage. I read that the parents were given photos of the heads only of their children to identify them, as seeing them torn apart by bullets would’ve been too devastating.
I see Schulte is still feeling a little neglected.
Annie
Those bodies were ripped apart. At first view one would suspect they had been attacked by an axe. Not much in the way of nice little holes.
EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT comment at 2:28.
Thanks! Stuff like that makes this blog interesting.
I’m curious why the term “slice and dice” in connection to little bodies ending up in pieces from devastating bullet damage is being disputed by the gun people. Is it somehow worse to be sliced and diced than riddled with bullet holes, with limbs and flesh laying around the 1st grade classroom?
Dusty
You’re smart. I’m sure you do not miss my point. Guns most certainly do slice and dice.
Let’s imagine pictures of seven year olds who have huddled in a group and shot by an AKxx. Do you think they just had neat little holes in their bodies? They were sliced and diced, and you know it.
Mike – I am amazed that you are still defending the use of sloppy phrasing.
Very good comment DBQ @ 2:28.
@ MIke
You’re welcome. I think that there is always something new to learn every day 🙂
Dusty
I’ve just took your advice and was reading about the Nazis and the ME. Interesting stuff and a history that I not suspected. Thanks.
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/the-horror-of-honor-killings-even-in-us/
“Noor Almaleki was 20 years old and living in Pheonix when she and her friend, 43-year-old Amal Khalaf, were struck by a car driven by Noor’s father. While Amal survived, Noor later died, and her father, Faleh al-Maleki, was later convicted of killing his daughter.
So-called “honor” crime is rooted in a global culture of discrimination against women, and the deeply rooted belief that women are objects and commodities, not human beings entitled to dignity and rights equal to those of men. Women’s bodies, particularly, are considered the repositories of family honor, and under the control and responsibility of her family (especially her male relatives). And large sections of society share traditional conceptions of family honor and approve of “honor” killings to preserve that honor.
The murder of women in the name of “honor” is a gender-specific form of discrimination and violence and should be regarded as part of a larger spectrum of violence against women, as well as a serious human rights violation. Violence against women in a global epidemic, and it effects women in every country, at every level of society”.
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Far more than religion has to do with honor killings. Women are not valued and are seen as the property of the male. Thank goodness that in this country women have autonomy over their own bodies, at least until the authoritarians here get some more power and have anti women laws passed. They’re trying.
Sever not severe. Although the results of a gun are severe.
@ Mike
Guns do not slice and dice as in the sense of how a knife. They can definitely cause great damage and can severe limbs. No one disputes this.
However, it like the difference between using a knife or a meat mallet to cut up a tomato. You get a destroyed tomato either way, but the end result is not the same. I am not going to use a gun to butcher my deer. I will slice and dice with a knife.
🙂
Young Hindus in the West are no less prone to violate traditional social codes than young Muslims, and their parents may be no less furious when they do, but Hindu families in the West do not feel the same degree of public humiliation and shame as they might experience back in India.
@ KCF and Mike
I’m having difficulty expressing these thoughts but here goes.
Perhaps the difference lies in the social class of people who are migrating from India. Where the class system is so structured in India, it is likely that mostly the upper class of Hindu/Indian is migrating and don’t feel the need to be so rigorous about their “honor” to the level of killing their own children. They are not surrounded by this strict class structure in their “new” country and don’t feel shamed.
Upper class versus lower class. It seems that those who are most concerned with honor, and this isn’t just Muslims or Hindus, are those in the lower classes. You see it in American culture as well. Defending their honor by violence Fighting words. Those are not generally experienced in the upper classes of American Culture or those who have means and education. I guess I’m saying when you don’t have much else to defend or fight over…..you can always defend your honor.
Also when people who immigrate remain separate and isolated….ghettoized if you will they will cling longer to their ‘honor system’ because they are surrounded by their own people and less likely to recognize other cultural systems.
So….the difference in why the Indians can dispense with their honor system and better assimilate is class levels and assimilation.
Note: I dislike using class as an argument but to not recognize the really strict class structure in other cultures is to ignore reality.
Dusty
You see my problem? Just yesterday I explained how a gun does indeed slice and dice to the very same person who today claims that guns do not slice and dice. In addition to that very same person often being an unreliable historian, he is also a lame comedian.
We just have to learn to cope – or take to the scotch a little early – eh?
Mike – I must be a reliable historian since you complimented DBQ on mentioning the Nazis and the ME, but she was just backing up my original comment.
Have you ever fired a gun at either a human or ballistic gel?
I haven’t seen this documentary but it might be interesting and illuminating in showing the ties between the Nazis and the Middle East. This connection is well documented and is a historical fact.
Few people realize that the Baath party was actually formed upon the principles and organizational structure of the Nazi party. Iraq, because of its oil and hatred of Jews, was an important battleground between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II.Nazi propaganda was broadcast throughout Baghdad, and Iraqis often went on rampages against Jews throughout the war. One of the most ardent Nazi supporters during WWII was named Khairallah Talfah. Talfah was Saddam’s uncle. After the war, many of the keyIraqi Nazi supporters, all of whom evaded prosecution, wound up involved in Saddam’s rise to power. This special examines the key individuals of the Iraqi-Nazi connection, the little-known battle for Iraq in WWII, and the strange link to Saddam Hussein.
http://www.amazon.com/History-Saddam-Third-Reich/dp/B001CU9C8I
Dusty
I did not know about the Nazi move to the ME and thank you for posting. I was aware of the large settlement to SA.
Indeed, lame jokes abound. Respond the best way you can.
And Nazi’s hated Socialists. They jailed thousands of them.
South America doesn’t seem to have a majority of Semitic people last I looked. No wonder the Nazi’s chose those countries over the ME. ( not Maine doggy)