Honour Killing - Bullshit

"Honour" killing has just been made the tiniest bit more difficult for the male morons of Syria who believe that such an action is actually within their purview. Previously, the crime of murdering a female relative for a perceived slight on the family honour had carries a maximum one-year sentence. Now, thanks to a presidential decree passed by Syria's Bashar Assad, honour killers must put in at least two years behind bars.
The gesture is a nice one, but I wonder if it will make any dent at all in the armour of misogyny worn by a society that tolerates and even teaches such malfeasance. The United Nations estimates that as many 5,000 females a year fall prey to the murderous mental midgets that believe they have the right to decide whether or not a woman should die.
In Syria's penal code, Article 548 had exempted murderers from the usual punishments for murder and assault as long as they claimed they had been provoked by the "suspicious state" of a female relative. Such wording would be a laugh if it weren't the horrendous reality that has justified the ending of so many lives. Such wording left it totally up to a male relative to decide whether or not he was having a bad enough day to take up a weapon and wield it with deadly intent. Such wording allowed impunity to those who ended a life on a whim, merely because they decided their honour had supposedly been besmirched. Such wording is reprehensible.
Somehow or other, a light has broken through the darkness of Syria's penal code long enough to let Assad see Article 548 as the pure misogyny that it is. Unfortunately, the light switched off before Assad could see Article 192 clearly. This article allows judges to waive or reduce punishment for any crime motivated by honour. Surely, allowing this article to stand means that any changes to article 548 will be meaningless. Assad's "changes" to the backward law of his home will have little more effect than a fart in a windstorm.
The term "honour killing" is an oxymoron, plain and simple, with all the emphasis on the "moron" part. There is no honour in such an act. There is only misogyny. There is only the totally misguided belief that protuberant bits of flesh dangling between some one's legs makes them somehow superior to others who lack those protuberances.
I can look on at Syria's Assad making such a gesture and wonder if he is perhaps doing this solely to pander to western sensibilities in a world that is shrinking by the minute due to cell phones and their camera lenses. Keeping societally condoned criminality under wraps is becoming harder and harder, so maybe he is doing exactly that. I can wonder but then I can turn away from the thought and not feel myself to be immediately endangered by it. When I read of Mohammad Shafia, Hamid Mohammad Shafia and Tooba Mohammad Yhaya being arrested here in Canada for a suspected honour killing, I am deeply perturbed and unable to easily leave it all behind. Those women were murdered on my country's soil, by their own family members. They were likely murdered for nothing other than a perceived slight to the honour of the men of the family. Changing such attitudes is going to take an incredible effort, on the part of the whole of society. I was gladdened to hear that the three suspected perpetrators are being harassed verbally and physically, too, by other detainees in the penal institute to which they have been consigned. Truly gladdened. I know that such a statement could bring on cries of shame! directed at me because these three are still waiting for a trial, but when I read such details as "Police said they have been able to "link" the Lexus SUV and the three accused to the locks. They believe that on the night in question, it was the three accused who "operated" the Nissan" in which the murdered women were found, I feel only horror at the though of honour killings making their way to my Canada. I feel only hate for the despicable types who think themselves justified in ending innocent lives.
Canada will not deal out to these three the fate they deserve. They are lucky to have perpetrated their evil here in Canada. They may face a life sentence, at most, but that comes complete with a chance of parole here in Canada. They gave no chance of parole to those they murdered. They may face protective custody to safeguard them from other prisoners who would kill them if given the chance. There was no protection for their four victims found dead in the Kingston lock.
This is another one of the times when I wish my country still had capital punishment. If and when these four animals are found guilty of ending the lives of the four women, their "rights" should immediately be considered to be history, and the rights of the taxpayer should take precedence. Taxpayers have a collective right to have their taxed spent as carefully as possible by the government. I think, in this case, that should mean that there is nothing spent on a last meal, for instance. There should be nothing spent on any further sheltering of the convicted killers, either. If the sentence is passed at 9:00, they should be marched right out back, stood up against the courthouse wall, and have the sentence carried out, promptly. By 9:05, the firing squad should be shouldering their rifles and going back inside. Mission completed. Message sent to Assad, and everyone else like him. Tolerate murderous attitudes toward women in your country if you will. Your attitude certainly will not be tolerated here. Know that there are other places in the world where women are treated as equals to men, and understand that such a backward attitude as yours may someday be overturned, even in your own backwater.