An introduction to HBV
The Association of Chief Police Officers defines honour based violence as a crime or incident, which has or may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of the family and/or community’.
Senior figures are often quoted as saying that hour based violence can affect any culture or religion, but the uncomfortable truth is that, in the UK at least, the vast majority of cases occur within Muslim and Sikh communities.
Ethnic backgounds
DI Micky Singh wrote an advisory report on honour based violence for ACPO he said: “You can’t hide the fact that most of these cases are families that come from Muslim backgrounds and that there are also cases involving Indians and Sikhs. You’d be daft to say that this is something that can happen in any culture.”
The element common to all honour crimes is the subordination and control of women, although this is not to say that the victims of honour crime aren’t often male. The example set by previous generations with traditions like Dowry and Sati, a custom in which a wife who outlives her husband must be burned in his funeral pyre, has led to women in some cultures being viewed as little more than commodities and servants.
Religion
A forced marriage is often the cause or context for honour based violence and as such is considered a key aspect to target when tackling the issue.
Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association (MPSA) DC Pal Singh explained that whilst violence against women is expressly forbidden in the Sikh faith, some Sikhs do cling to a set of archaic Punjabi values in which women are perceived as inferior to men. “It is an Eastern Pandemic, when our forefathers came here their culture came with them their values came with them, both good and bad. Unfortunately honour violence is a part of that.” Evidence of these values can still be found in the disparity between recorded births of girls and boys in the Punjab.
Just an excuse
No major religion condones forced marriage or honour based violence, so why is religion used as an excuse for honour based violence? One theory holds that younger generations are subscribing to misguided corruptions of traditional religious and cultural values as a way of clinging to their identity.
Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal OBE said “This is not religious or cultural, this is weak people, they might use religion or culture as an excuse and some people will use this to exert their identity.”
Honour related crimes and killings are often shocking in their brutality and difficult to comprehend from a Western perspective. See the photo gallery on the right hand side of this page to see some examples of honour crimes in the UK.