Women's rights activist: Honor killings are only the tip of the iceberg

Berlin - The women's rights activist and critic of Islam, Seyran Ates, warned after the murder of an Afghan woman by her brothers that such acts of violence were only the end of a spiral. "Before there is an honor killing, many other things happen. There are arranged marriages and forced marriages, domestic violence," she told the RBB Inforadio.

If girls and women do not adhere to the established rules, there could be an honor killing in the end. Women's organizations have been pointing out this problem in migrant families since the 1980s.

Ates emphasized: "We do not hear from original German families that brothers get together and kill the sister because she lives too western". In contrast, there are migrants "who do not accept that women here in Germany also have the right to lead a free and self-determined life".

Immigrants have a different concept of honor
She contradicted politicians who did not want to call the act an honor killing. It is an “indictment of politics” when the Berlin Senator for Integration, Elke Breitenbach (Left Party) , refuses to use the term and claims that she does not know how to better integrate men. In view of the debate about the term, much would be gained if it were accepted that this phenomenon existed. The immigrants' concept of honor must also be understood, as this is very different from the European one.

The public prosecutor's office and the State Criminal Police Office announced on Friday that two Afghan brothers, 22 and 25 years old, had been arrested on suspicion of murdering their 34-year-old sister in Berlin. Accordingly, the mother of two children was killed in mid-June and her body was brought in a suitcase by train to the 25-year-old suspect's Bavarian home.

Breitenbach did not want to classify the act as an honor killing. On the other hand, she spoke of femicide and compared the killing to other acts of relationship.

Source: Junge Freiheit