On Sunday in Erbil, Northern Iraq, Kurdish men and women came together to protest against honor killings after the brutal murder of a young woman earlier in the month.
On or around April 7, 2007… Du’a Khalil Aswad, a 17 year old Kurdish girl was murdered by public stoning after running away from home for a so-called honour crime. Du’a was a member of Iraq’s Yezidi religious minority from the village of Bahzan in northern Iraq. She was killed by a group of men and in the presence of a large noisy crowd in the town of Bashika, near the city of Mosul. Some of her relatives may have participated in her stoning.
Amnesty International reported that Du’a Khalil Aswad’s murder is said to have been committed by relatives and other Yezidi men because she had engaged in a relationship with a Sunni Muslim boy and had been absent from her home for one night. Some reports suggested that she had converted to Islam, but others deny this. Initially, she was reportedly given shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, but her killers stormed the house, took her outside and stoned her to death. Her death by stoning, lasted for some 30 minutes.
Today in Erbil… Capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq, women and men came together to protest the murder of Du’a Khalil Aswad. The demonstration was organised by 90 NGOs and attracted protestors from across the whole Kurdish region.
The video of the horrible stoning death of this young Kurdish woman was filmed and is posted on a Kurdish website.
It is absolutely barbaric!
(I will not link to the video. Publius did.)
Pictures from Stop Honour Killings website.
You can join the Kurdish activists, poets, and writers and sign the petition (HERE)they put together to send to Kurdish officials to outlaw the barbaric practices of public stonings and honor killings.
Update: Fausta has more on the Yazidi culture.
The Jawa Report says that the death of the girl resulted in the slaughter of 23 Yazidis by outraged Muslims.
