THE AGE
'Honor killings' happen here, too
Thursday 1 February 2001
Pamela Bone ("No honor in barbarism", on this page last Thursday) deserves
praise for condemning the barbarism of "honor killings" and clitoridectomy.
The killing of women, whether under the Islamic veil or in a mini-skirt at
the hands of a raving Jordanian or a bloke in Western jeans, deserves
condemnation. However, such is Bone's focus on the alleged sins of Islam
she ends up sounding like a modern-day Crusader oblivious to the hypocrisy
of Western "law".
Ironically, on the very day Bone was attributing all manner of darkness to
Islam and the culture of the veil, The Age told of an alleged rape victim
being asked by defence counsel to explain why she had been photographed
semi-naked with the accused four years earlier. If only she'd worn a veil!
It wasn't long ago Australian courts demanded that a woman who "cried rape"
chronicle her sexual history and that the prosecution show evidence of
struggle by the victim against the alleged rape.
And many may remember the protests outside The Age in August 1991 after the
judge in R. v. Hakopian "discounted" the penalty on the grounds that the
woman Hakopian raped was a sex worker and therefore less likely to be
traumatised by rape than a "chaste woman".
One must wonder what Heather Osland, sentenced to 15 years for the murder
of her pathologically violent husband, would make of suggestions that our
courts are free of notions of male honor or gender bias. Despite Osland's
son wielding the piece of pipe that killed her husband, he was freed. And
although Justice Kirby relied heavily on the "sanctity of human life" when
rejecting Osland's appeal to the High Court, some have asked whether flawed
cultural assumptions and the sanctity of man's place in the home weren't
the real sub-text. For while a pardon by the Victorian Government might
free Osland, it will do and say nothing about the notions of woman as
property that continue to underpin so many legal judgments.
For every sensational so-called "honor killing" in "exotic" Eastern lands
there's a plain garden variety case in a Supreme Court just beyond the gaze
of middle-class Australia.
In 1982 not a soul protested when Justice Lush allowed a defence of
provocation in R. v. Dincer. The former governor, Justice James Gobbo,
later praised the law of provocation as an example of the "flexibility and
humanity of the common law".
Dincer had stabbed his 16-year-old daughter Zerrin to death in the bedroom
of her boyfriend's house. In the accused man's "Turkishness", defence
counsel Colin Lovitt found an opening. Zerrin's relationship with her
boyfriend, he argued, had brought dishonor to the family and to her
father's position in the community. That was why he "lost control", drew a
knife from his sock and killed her, the court was told.
It worked. Dincer was found guilty only of manslaughter in a case that at
first glance appears to mimic the killings about which Pamela Bone writes.
But was this case really about Islam and cultural distinctiveness? Or,
beneath the superficiality and arguments about "cultural relativity", were
deep-seated barbaric assumptions about the proprietorial rights of men,
irrespective of race or culture, at work? After all, when a Turkish bloke
by the name of Caliskan killed a man who offered him lemonade, which his
defence said implied "effeminacy in Turkish culture", the court was unmoved
by appeals to "cultural relativity".
Maybe a contemporary judgment by Justice George Hampel throws some light on
this anomaly. On February 10, 1989, in R. v. Keogh, Justice Hampel told
legal counsel he proposed to "give the jury the appropriate directions (to
allow a defence of provocation) in accordance with Dincer's case". This
meant the jury had to consider the characteristics of the accused when
asking whether an ordinary man might have done what he did. Having stabbed
his ex-girlfriend, Vicki Cleary, to death outside the kindergarten where
she worked, Peter Keogh was subsequently acquitted of murder on the grounds
that, like Dincer, he'd "lost control". He served three-and-half years for
the manslaughter of my sister.
The real link between the rulings in R. v. Dincer and R. v. Keogh is the
killing of a woman. Even without the "Muslim" card, Dincer's barrister
would have argued "family honor" and documented for the jury - as is
routine in such cases - a series of provocative acts by the dead girl.
Ultimately these killings and the trials that follow are as much about male
honor as are the actions of the raving Jordanian. That's why neither jury
could find the Catholic Keogh or Muslim Dincer guilty of murder.
Hair-raising stories of local women being stabbed, bashed with a drill, or
shot in front of their children by their "ex" in the name of love - a
euphemism for honor - only to result in a verdict of not guilty of murder
are not a relic of Victorian England or Islam. The records of our own
criminal justice system are so full of them it would make you cry.
If sensational stories involving the reciting of the Koran as a prelude to
murder capture your imagination, I suggest you pop into the Supreme Court
sometime when a bloke's pleading provocation for killing a woman. It's as
profound a lesson in barbarism as I've encountered, and a salutary reminder
that "honor killings" know no cultural boundaries.
Phil Cleary was the federal MP for Wills from 1992-96.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This story was found at:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/2001/02/01/FFXALYSVLIC.html
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