More and more honour killings

Time for action

Enough has been said and written about honour killings without much concrete being done about it. The Abbotabad incident – where a teenage girl was killed and burnt by a jirga for allegedly helping another girl elope – is yet another horrible stain on the country. And, if precedent is anything to go by, once again, much will be said, little will be done, and this story too will eventually be rubbished to the dustbin of history forever. And this was not the only such story that made the headlines this week. A boy in Karachi stabbed his sister, repeatedly, for talking on the phone to a stranger. He did not show any remorse of course – and neither did his family – father, brother, uncle, etc.

Yet, deplorable as the second incident is, the first is even more gruesome. It involves both the barbarity of these so called honour killings and the social and moral depravity that allows these jirgas. And if such barbarity has never visited this particular area before – as the city mayor said in the incident’s aftermath – then authorities should be even more alarmed. It means that contrary to the official narrative, extremism is not on the decline but rather has infected areas, close to the capital, that have no history of it.

Politicians expressing revolt over twitter, etc, need to be reminded of how little they did about the issue when their own parties were in power. Bilawal’s lament, for example, did not mention how the Peoples Party has never budged despite many, many such cases in Sindh. PML-N, on the other hand, has tried to position itself on the right side of this divide of late. And these latest incidents will now test its sincerity. Not only must the culprits be caught and made an example out of, there must also be swift legislation against all such practices that have long plagued our society.