Tribal Killings of Women must be Tried under Anti-Terrorism Laws

Hundreds of women are reported to be killed every year in Iraq, but in reality a thousand additional women are killed annually at the hands of patriarchal tribes who accuse women of immorality and who are proud of this suppression and for forbidding any personal freedom or any other rights for women. They are turning women into slaves whose role revolves only around domestic work and reproduction, based on their tribes imposing a husband on them who they hate and do not have any feelings toward.

Women according to the patriarchal tribal thinking are defined as slaves and obedient to the male masters who impose and dictate to women everything about what she says, works, moves and lives. The tribes are strengthened by their enslavement of women based on Islamic concepts about so-called “adultery”. They also deal with the wife as a tool for service, reproduction and private property that can be disposed of whenever appropriate for “the owner”, the husband, or as it is called in the law, “the head of the family”.

The Judicial Foundation in Iraq seeks to provide legal support for tribal killings of women with sections of the Penal Code, allowing male killers to evade homicide charges. The reasons for these legal efforts are to allow  masculine vulgarity  to eliminate female individual rebellion against repression and tribal patriarchal control. Despite the feminist movement’s demand to abolish Article 409 of the Penal Code, which provides legal cover for the killing of women, the Ministry of “No Justice” did not move in any way to put an end to the tribal practices. It even asked backward Islamic lawmakers to create what they call the “Jaafari law” which seeks the abuse of young women, the elderly and the girls in forms that are not accepted by the modern segments of society in Iraq.

It is time for the state of Iraq to recognize the woman as a full citizen and not as a slave to her owner, to  remove the right of husbands, fathers and brothers to kill women and to deal with women as  humans who have the same rights and privileges as men. In addition, the state must be responsible for protecting women as  citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.

It is a shame on a state that allows, and even supports, the tribal killing of women under the pretext of male honor.

The Supreme Judicial Council must immediately issue a decision to deal with tribal killings of women under the Fourth Anti-Terrorism Act, since the killing of a woman causes her family and her children to face terror and lifelong fear.

The killing of women by criminal tribes is not an act to remove the women’s shame; it is a consecration and a declaration of the shame and hatred of the male towards the life of women and their right to a free and dignified life, and nothing more than an expression of the extent of their crime and underdevelopment. The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq rejects the complicity of the state as a partner and supporter of the killing of women.

We call for the immediate repeal of Article 409 of the Penal Code and the accountability of all those who kill women under the provisions of  Anti-Terrorism Law, since the killing of more than one thousand women annually is not less burdensome to society than a tribal act which is known as “tribal Dhaka” (Dhaka in English means a tribal practice that allows the opening of gunfire on a house as an act of warning).

The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

November16th, 2018

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