Honour related violence

Robert Ermers (PhD) is an arabist and turcologist. He is a trainer and consultant on culture related matters. He is an external analist to the National Expertise Center in Honour Related violence of the Netherlands' police. (www.mo-perspectief.nl)

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Introduction

Honour related violence is in fact a common social phenomenon, even though the details differ along cultural lines.

The sentence above is the outline of this contribution. The more common a phenomenon is, the better it can be related to general tendencies, and the easier it is to understand certain characteristics. Making clear that there are obvious links between a given phenomenon to general concepts renders it unnecessary to exotise behaviour of people from 'other' cultures. Apart from being more fair, this approach will enhance communication both with victims and perpetrators of honour related violence and, in the long run, help combatting honour related violence.

In this paper we will therefore examine the exact meaning of a number of concepts related to honour related violence, the most important being: honour, social status, face, family, honour killing, honour related violence.

There is a certain tendancy to consider honour related violence a subcategory of domestic violence or of male violence against women. However, the term itself reveals no correlation to that respect. Honour related violence is related to honour just like alcohol is related to alcohol related violence. The term honour related violence in itself therefore does not reveal anything about the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, the victim's or perpetrator's gender or the place the violence takes place. The only thing it conveys is that in one way or another honour is involved.

1.2) Brief history of honour related violence in Europe

The presence of honour related violence in North West Europe is generally being related to the immigration of workers from the Mediterranean, especially from rural areas in Turkey and Morocco in the sixties and seventies. In the eighties the immigrant workers started getting their families to Europe. Starting from that period police forces were confronted with the first instances of blood revenge and honour related violence, even though the latter term dit not exist at the time.[1]

Later on, numerous refugees, escaping poverty in Africa and Asia, and people fleeing wars in the Middle East, came to seek a better future in Europe. This paper is based upon cases from the cultural area that stretches from Morocco to Pakistan and from Turkey to Yemen. For sake of convenience, this area is called Middle East.

In view of the number of immigrants and their offspring, the study of the culture-specific problems has become more than a mere academic excercise. Not only do governments need - where possible - to take care of prevention, and the protection and treatment of victims, but a democratic system also demands a transparant legal prosecution, and a fair trial for suspects.

The type of violence discussed here is indisputedly related to the honour of the family. The compound 'family honour' presupposes knowledge of two concepts: family and honour. At the same time it is known that cultures differ from one another in their perceptions of both honour and family. In other words: European or western concepts of honour and family are not adequate for explaining phenomenons that stem from different cultures. Often reference is made to all kinds of stereotypes that very rarely relate to the complex reality.

2) Honour

2.1) What is honour?

This question has been asked many times, but it appears to be more difficult to answer than is often thought. In general, though, most researchers acknowledge that honour is related to the position of the individual to his or her society. However, in antropological research honour is often mixed up with social status (cf. Bartels 1993, also Van Eck 2003). In one anthropological source the Egyptian tribe Awlad Ali is assigned the following characteristics of 'honour': descent, authonomy, independence, strength, self discipline, morality, authority, honesty, integrity, loyality (Abu-Lughod 1986:86). Most of these characteristics have been known as elements of social status.

Roughly there are two types of social status: attributed status, i.e. status related to the family or environment one is born in and achieved status (cf. Foladare 1968:55).

Attributed status: being a member of a certain family, being born in a certain town, having a certain accent, having a light (or a dark) coloured skin, straight or curly hair, having a tall (or a short) body, etc.

Achieved status: a high age (and the wisdom that comes with it), a certain profession or level of education, achievements in sports, craftmanship or the like, nice possessons (car, cattle, home), being known as very generous, loyal, courageous, being married into a certain family, knowing powerful people, having a beautiful spouse, beautiful children

For each characteristic it depends of the cultural context whether the characteristic is considered a positive, negative or neutral asset. For example, in some communities knowing the Koran by heart raises one's social status, in others it is more important to look young. Especially achieved status is variable per se, since some may possess more of a given characteristic than others, while people may lose the characteristic in the course of time.

2.2) Rejection and ostracising

In every community there is a number of qualities whose possession or absence have immense consequences for those involved. Those consequences may be that people are totally ostracised from and rejected by their community. We propose that honour is derived from characteristics that are more fundamental than those merely related to social status.

First let us note that people are rejected from their community for characteristics or deeds for which they bear no real responsibility, e.g. the colour of their skin, a physical defect, a certain birthmark, or because of having bewitched the crops. Rejecting people in such reasons is called discrimination and not acceptable in most societies.

Apart from that, in all human communities people are being ostracised and rejected for actions to which their community attaches fundamental moral values.

For example, it is known that European women who during the World War II fell in love and maintained a sexual relationship with a German soldier - which they often regarded as a serious engagement - on Liberation Day were dragged from their homes by their neighbours, were publicly shaven and pushed through the streets as 'jerry whores'. Sometimes relatives of those women underwent the same fate (Diederichs 2008, Ericsson and Simonson 2005). In the same way families that had collaborated with the German enemy were dealt with in the same way (Tames 2009). These groups of people were accused of having loose morals or treachery or both.

Even after decades, people have still difficulties in talking about the allegations and the things that happened to them in their youth. The subject is taboo, which means that it is still felt as a stigma, and exactly for that reason it is felt as dangerous. If other people knew that ..., they might start bullying them again. The quality or action for which people risk being expelled from their community can be summarised as 'social misbehaviour'.

In present western societies people are still stigmatised for social misbehaviour. In most communities an (unjust) accusation of abuse of children is enough to ruin someone's life. But not only perpetrators are being stigmatised. Recent research among the relatives of serious offenders has shown that even though they themselves were totally innocent, they had to cope with feelings of shame and a stigma caused by a member of their family:

2.3) Social sanctions

After having committed serious social misbehaviour an individual risks being exposed to social sanctions. Note that in this sense honour is personal, but that the sanctions - depending on the type of misbehaviour - may stretch to the extended family, consisting of dozens of individuals.[2]

An individual who is considered guilty of misbehaviour is no longer met with the normal respect. He or she is no longer tolerated in community. The most serious social sanctions consist of the following:

• no longer accepted in public social life (coffeeshops)
• no longer invited by neighbours and friends
• friends stay away,
• a shop is no longer visited,
• being fired immediately from one's job,
• being abused and spit at in the street,
• being an unwanted guest on feasts and celebrations
• none pays his last respects,
• an announced marriage or engagement is cancelled,
• existing marriages come under tension,
• being expelled from the village (Ermers 2007:71; cf. e.g. also Chatelard 2003:222).

The most serious social sanctions cover a complete social ostracisation of all members from a given family, men and women alike. When problems occur among an immigrant family, the social sanctions are likely to extend to their relatives abroad. Therefore it is impossible to think that family honour is mainly a men's business; on the contrary: women are victims of honour loss as well. In other words, judging and punishing entire families for the behaviour of one member is a common phenomenon in human society.