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According to official statistics, one woman a month is killed in the UK by her family in the name of honour, usually because she has rejected or tried to escape from a forced marriage, or has found a partner to love of her own choosing. But campaigners suspect that the figures are much higher, with women being driven to kill themselves out of desperation, or murders being disguised to look like suicide.
Though honour killing is sometimes thought to be a Muslim problem, it occurs in many patriarchal communities around the world, including Hindu, Sikh and Christian too.
Presenter Shazia Khan, talks to three women, one of them in hiding in fear of her life, about why they have become targets of such rage and threatened violence. And how the very people who they would have hoped would protect them have turned on them.
For the women who have challenged their family’s expectations there is a life-long price to pay, they can never relax, ‘No Way Out’. This program airs as part of our international documentary exchange series, Global Perspectives: Escape!
Links:
A Murder That Could be Predicted in Advance
An analysis of one of the high profiled killings Sweden has ever encountered-an Honor Killing.
Syria Condemns Honor Killings
The country of Syria reconsiders laws on honor killings
Books:
In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame by: Unni Wikan, Anna Paterson (Translator) 2008 A heart breaking story of a Kurdish immigrant that only wanted to live the life of any young woman in her adopted home of Sweden but was murdered by her own father because of it.
Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family by: Karen Tintori 2008 Honor Killings are not only practiced in the Middle East but other countries like Italy.
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