LUIZ SUGIMOTO

Case 1

Accused who, surprising the woman in a situation of adultery, kills her and her companion. The thesis of legitimate defense of honor was accepted by a significant majority by the Jury Court and confirmed by the São Paulo Court of Justice, which dismissed the Public Prosecutor's appeal, maintaining the Jury's decision. One of the arguments: "Antonio, already injured in his honor, an object of ridicule, called, now bluntly, horned by people from that locality (...), little knew what awaited him. He entered the house and saw his wife and JJ sleeping soundly, half naked, in his own bed and in the presence of his son, whose crib was in the same room (...). If he left that house without doing what he did, his honor would be indelibly compromised".

Case 2

Flirting was a mistake that cost Samera dearly, who was just 15 years old when her neighbors in Salfeet, a small Palestinian town on the West Bank, saw her talking alone with a boy. The family's honor was at stake and the marriage was quickly arranged. At 16, she had a son. Five years later, no longer able to stand that forged marriage, she ran away. According to the story, she passed from one man to another as she went from place to place. Finally, in July 1999, the family was able to reach her. She was found in a well, with her neck broken. Her father told the coroner that his daughter had committed suicide. But everyone knew that Samera was the victim of an honor killing; she had been killed by her own family because her actions had dishonored her name.

O case 1 is in the article "Human rights from a gender perspective", written by researchers Silvia Pimentel and Valéria Pandjiarjian, from the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women's Rights (Cladem), and published in the magazine Study Center of the Attorney General of the State of São Paulo. Case 2 is in the report "Women are murdered to protect the family from 'dishonor'", written by Sally Armstrong, about the dedication of lawyer and criminologist Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian to the fight for the rights of Palestinian women, and available on the Center's website of Independent Media (CMI-Brazil).

The exchange of information about the practice of "honor crimes" in Latin America and the Middle East was the objective of the international meeting organized at Unicamp by the Center for Gender Studies – Pagu, at the end of August. "We discussed the differences and similarities, considering that our continent is mostly Catholic, where these murders cannot be justified by Islam", says anthropologist Mariza Corrêa, professor at Unicamp and researcher at Pagu, who coordinated the seminar bringing together representatives from Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Germany, England, Sweden, Lebanon, Turkey and the United Nations. The meeting took place at a time when the UN is promoting extensive global research against crimes against women – Project on strategies of response to crimes of honor (www.soas.ac.uk/honourcrimes).

According to Mariza Corrêa, the striking difference is that in Latin America it is husbands or partners who kill women, whereas in Islamic countries the issue of honor is linked to the family of origin and women are generally killed by blood relatives – father, brother, cousin. "If, in one case, it is about justifying the husband's wounded pride and, in the other, about reconstituting the relationships of the woman's family of origin, why bring together Latin American and Middle Eastern researchers to discuss the so-called crimes of honor? Precisely to demystify them. And, in the same movement, demystify the idea that the notion of honor would have the blessing of Muslim religions as a way of controlling female sexuality, which Islamic leaders vehemently deny", says the professor .

Mariza Corrêa reiterates that crimes against women are far from having unanimous approval in Islamic countries. "These are forms of sociability that are very deep-rooted in the customs of small and poor localities, where control of one person over another is exercised face to face. Punishments must have the approval of local religious leaders and, apparently, there is a strong movement among community leaders. several Islamic countries to make it clear that the Quran does not endorse this type of murder", he explains. The anthropologist says that, both in countries with a Catholic tradition and in countries with a Muslim tradition, the issue of honor hides other issues, being the object of political uses. "The common observation is that, if the rule of law is weak, at any latitude the law of the strongest will prevail. However, women have been resisting the position of victims and are beginning to ask uncomfortable questions about seemingly established situations."

Symbol – Mariza Corrêa says that the murder of Samia Sarwar, from Pakistan, in 1999, became a kind of symbol of the struggle of feminist groups, women and men in several countries in the Middle East, against the customs and laws that leave people unpunished such crimes. Mother of two children, the 29-year-old lawyer had decided to separate from her husband who beat her. As her family did not accept her decision, she took refuge in a women's shelter, refusing to receive male relatives. Under the pretext of giving her divorce documents, Samia's mother convinced her to go to the office of the lawyer who was handling the case. Her mother arrived accompanied by her driver and Samia's uncle. It was the driver who shot Samia in the head and ended up killed by an office security guard. The mother stepped over her daughter's body and went to meet the victim's father, who allegedly asked if the work had been done.

In the absence of official statistics, it is estimated that 5.000 women were killed worldwide by family members (marital or original), allegedly in defense of family honor, 1.000 of them Pakistanis. Jordan, Syria and Lebanon guarantee, in the criminal code, the acquittal of a husband who kills a wife caught in the act of adultery, in addition to offering other mitigating factors for these cases. "The laws in Turkey and Iraq also allow the defense of murderers in the name of honor, even if they do not provide for acquittal. In Turkey, which has a high homicide rate, around 200 women are killed every year in conflicts involving family honor , including girls, who in rural areas are forced to get married before the age of 15", says Mariza Corrêa.

In Pakistan, which accounts for at least 20% of murdered women, honor killings are not covered by the code, according to the anthropologist. However, the use of "serious and immediate provocation", introduced by the British and later abolished, continues to be used to justify killings in defense of honor, increasing the number of women killed. "This is because the cases recorded by researchers present the most futile motives seen as 'provocation'. Two penal systems coexist there: the State system, with laws inherited from the Indian-British tradition, and the tribal system, a mixture of tradition and tribal codes and religious", he observes.

Artifices – In relation to Turkey and other countries, "honor crime" is often alleged to obtain a lesser sentence, noting the "social distinction" to the person who has "cleansed" the family's honor. "When family members together decide that the behavior of a girl or woman should be punished by death, the task is often delegated to an underage relative, who will therefore receive a reduced sentence", adds Mariza Corrêa.

The professor also pays attention to the hypothesis of murders for vested interests, as in India, where an ancient custom of killing the widow when her husband dies, would be serving as a pretext for obtaining inheritances. "In countless cases reported by researchers in this region, women are killed in the context of a land dispute, in the context of a conflict between families, or for any other reason, and their death is presented as an 'honor crime'. Yet another reason why it is so difficult to estimate the number of murders committed under this allegation", he states.

The Latin term is 'femicide' During the three-day meeting at Unicamp, researchers from the Middle East heard a lot about the implementation of police stations specialized in assisting women in Brazil and about jurisprudence. “We have little data on the murders of women in Latin America, with the exception of Costa Rica, which, being a small country, allowed the study of all cases over a period of the last 20 years. Researchers from this and other countries, instead of honor crimes, prefer to use the term 'femicide' for the murders of women within the context of a violent domestic relationship”, explains professor Mariza Corrêa, from Pagu. The Unicamp anthropologist states that, in the case of Brazil, the use of legitimate defense of honor has been gradually reduced by the action of higher courts, which have the power to send the husband who kills his wife to a new trial and is acquitted by the courts of the jury. “This argument is not included in the Penal Code and, as a tradition, it has been systematically opposed by the feminist movement since the 1970s. There is an increasing number of invalidated sentences. There is already established jurisprudence that honor is inherent to the person, that no one can attack the honor of another; if a woman commits adultery, she hurts her own honor”, ​​says the teacher. Mariza Corrêa is the author of the book “Morte em Família”, the first research bringing a feminist perspective on homicides between couples, having examined legal processes and the use of honor as a defense strategy by men. “When I arrived in Campinas, in 1970, there was a trial in a controversial case involving the prosecutor who killed his adulterous wife and ended up acquitted. 'Campinas washed away his honor', was the headline in the newspaper”, she recalls. She observes that, in Latin American countries, the reasons for the murder of women by their partners are no less futile than in the Middle East: jealousy, wounded vanity, arrogance, transformed later, at trial, into “defense of family honor , threatened by the immoral behavior of the victim.”

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