Police have arrested fourteen village elders from northwest Pakistan in connection with the murder of a sixteen-year old girl who was accused of helping a friend to marry without her father’s consent. The men allegedly burned the girl alive alive after an informal village tribunal (jirga) condemned her to death for violating the “honor” of her friend’s family. According to the Washington Post, the village elders said the girl must die “to make a lesson for other girls.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan called the murder brutal and ruthless, stating “the criminal actions of the jirga must be condemned unreservedly by all those who stand for rule of law and the right to life itself.” According to the Commission, nearly 9,000 women and girls have been killed in similar crimes of “honor” since 2004. However, the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has pledged to stop the murder of women in the name of honor and, in early 2016, his political party successfully championed a comprehensive bill to end violence against women in Pakistan’s largest province of Punjab. The HRCP said this most recent honor killing shows that far more must be done to end impunity for violent crimes against women in Pakistan.
Compiled from: Iqbal, Aamir & Craig, Tim, Pakistan police arrest 14 in ‘honor killing’ of teen said to have helped bride to elope, The Washington Post (May 5, 2016); HRCP aghast at girl’s jirga-ordained murder, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) News Release (May 6, 2016).