Karachi, Sept 15: At least 631 women and six girls died in "honour killings" perpetrated by their own relatives in Pakistan in the first eight months of this year, researchers for an independent human rights organisation said today. The Madadgar group said that about half of the deaths were reported in southern Sindh province, and that many more cases were believed to have been unreported in the conservative communities of Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province, both bordering Afghanistan.
``The actual number of women who fell victim to gruesome honour killings is definitely much higher than the reported cases but it is hard to record each case, especially when you don't have enough resources,'' Zia Awan, of the lawyers for human rights and legal aid group, told.
Madadgar is jointly run by the lawyers' group and the U.N. Children's Fund. It found that husbands carried out 247 of the killings, brothers 112, fathers 54, sons 25 and uncles two. In the other cases, there was no mention of who carried out the killing.
Researcher Amir Murtaza of Madadgar said today that the findings were based on media reports. The group monitors 25 newspapers in the Urdu, English and Sindhi languages each day. Awan said in most cases, men accused of involvement in illicit affairs escape punishment.
Such honour killings are against Pakistani law, but in conservative rural communities traditional attitudes hold sway, and often police and the judicial system fail to prosecute those responsible.
Bureau Report