Epidemiology of femicide: An autopsy based study at DHQ Teaching Hospital Sahiwal.

Objective: To know the epidemiology of female homicidal deaths in Sahiwal. Study Design: Descriptive Retrospective study. Setting: Department of Forensic Medicine, Sahiwal Medical College and DHQ Teaching Hospital Sahiwal. Period: 1stJanuary 2016 to 31st December 2018. Material & Methods: This study includes 73 cases of female homicide from a total of 314 autopsies conducted at DHQ Teaching Hospital,Sahiwal. These cases were examined regarding their age, marital status, residential background, cause of death, alleged offender and apparent motive of Killing. Result: The study revealed that commonly involved age group was 20-29 years (45.2%), 45 (61.6%) females were married and 64 (87.7%) female victims belonged to rural area. Firearms were the causative agent in 31 (42. 5%) cases. In 19 (59.5%) cases the alleged offender was husband. Honor killing, financial/property disputes were the main reason for homicides. Conclusion: The violence against women in Sahiwal is higher in rural areas and more commonly affecting the married women of child bearing age.

Honor Killing: A case study of Pakistan

Pakistan along with many other parts of the world has the persistent phenomenon regarding Honor Killing. This research article states the case study of Pakistan in relation to honor killing, its causes and the struggles made by national and international community to reduce such like honor crimes. The effects of several amendments that are previously made have been discussed in the piece of paper stating therein that all the amendments are unable to tackle the deficiencies. There is an actual desire of further improvements and latest amendments that is required to be resolved to eliminate the issues in hand. In the last section of the paper, it is addressed that how Pakistan has made up with the international obligation and its compliance towards the protection of women rights. Analyses of the elements that are keeping the practice of honor killing as well as the recommendation to amend the relevant laws are explained in this research article.

Crimes Against Human Life in Turkish Penal Code

Human life is one of the most important values protected by law. Crimes and punishments are legitimate and essential tools necessary to protect such values. Although most crimes concerned with the protection of human life are organized in the Turkish Penal Code, other regulations serving the same purpose do exist as well in other codes. It is not open to discussion that intentional crimes require heavier penalty than negligent ones and damage-causing crimes than life-threatening ones. According to the Turkish Penal Code, life exists when a person is born healthy and alive and perishes with that person’s death. Although birth and death have their own proof procedures and means in separate private law rules, no such rules are in fact regulated in Criminal Law. In Turkish Law the embryo and fetus are not considered as a human entity. The crime of killing a newborn baby within the frame of honor killing does not exist in Turkish law. Furthermore, killing people in the name of customs or vendetta is a crime frequently encountered in Turkey. Turkish legislation punishes all kinds of aid to suicide as well. Finally, death penalty does not exist in the Turkish legal system.

Negotiating the Societal and Cultural Impact on a Perpetrator’s Psyche in Elif Shafak’s Honour

The present study focuses on investigating the behavioral psychology of the protagonist, Iskender as a killer from the text Honour by Elif Shafak, a renowned Turkish novelist. Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (1977) presents the importance of Observational Learning, Imitation, and Modeling in an individual's social learning and personality development. He propounds that behavior, cognition, and other environmental influences: all operate as interacting determinants to influence the development of an individual. Hence, by taking the cognitive framework of Bandura, and by tracking the factors behind the felony committed by Iskender in the name of honor, the researchers have analyzed Iskender’s behavioral psychology and guilt-oriented self. The study showed that Iskender was not criminal by nature but had been forced to act on honor ideology. Honor serves as a social code in Turkish Islamic culture and the analysis shed light on the moral principles or ethos in Turkish society implying that moral degradation and honor-killing practices are an everyday phenomenon in Turkish Islamic culture. The arguments in the study provided a lens to the readers to understand the psyche of the accused; Iskender was a victim of culturally transmitted ideology. Society, culture, and immediate relations served as the powerful influences on him in instigating him to commit this felony. Besides, the analysis exposed the subaltern position of women in Turkish culture. The study is a positive addition to Turkish literature and literature on honor killing.

Socio-Cultural Causes of Kala Kali (Honour Killing): A Case of Tehsil Jam Pur

Pakistani rural people have to face many problems under the umbrella of tribal laws and customs. These cultural norms and tribal laws compel the people to kill their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters in the name of so-called "honour". The major objectives of the study were to explore the socio-cultural causes of kali kali (honor killing) and to see the impacts of kala kali on victim's family. The cases of fourteen victims were studied where the members of victim's family were informants as victims themselves were not available. The result of the present study shows that the lust for money, feudalism, illiteracy and lack of awareness about human rights are the causes of kala kali. It can be reduced by increasing awareness and education. Government should launch some policies like a comprehensive legal awareness program to make people aware of their legal rights.

Honor killing as a dark side of modernity: Prevalence, common discourses, and a critical view

Honor killing is a serious social problem in some countries that is yet to be adequately explained and addressed. We start with an overview of the conceptualization of this phenomenon and review its global prevalence. We argue that honor killing cannot be fully explained by focusing only on religion and sexism. We present a feminist Durkheimian analysis of honor killing as a form of informal social control and argue that honor killing represents a ‘dark side of modernity’ in which the systematic marginalization and stigmatization of minorities and social groups have led them to rely more on traditional honor codes as a kind of informal social control, exacerbating honor crimes. We discuss how a more effective approach to combat honor killing requires not only addressing the issues of sexism and religious fundamentalism, but also the systematic exclusion and stigmatization of local groups and minorities.