Basra, Nov 28, (VOI)- "The Iraqi woman’s head has often been under the guillotine all the time. In the past she had been severely punished by her tribe fellows for honor claims while today she is slaughtered for vague worthless causes by horrifying invisible creatures," Shaymaa, a young typist from Basra city, said. Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, has been witnessing an increase in violence against women according to local police sources.
"The city is witnessing an innovated kind of terrorism: At least 2-3 corpses of women are daily found dumped near the city garbage gathering places, mostly beheaded or mutilated!" a senior authorized spokesman for Basra police told reporters in November.
He also added, "It is obvious that these women have been killed on skeptic bases or for other incomprehensible reasons with the least legal justification." A humanitarian activist from the predominantly Shiite Basra blamed militiamen and Muslim extremists for the wave against women allover the city.
"The executors seemingly belong to the same bands ideologically and politically linked to the dominating fanatic parties and militias," the young activist who completely refused his name be mentioned told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
He added "things started with writings on walls warning women against putting make-up or not wearing Hijabs (head scarf) or they would face the heaviest penalty: Death !"
The extremists’ threats have not been limited to Muslims only, but also gone beyond to women of different faith.
"It’s something against logic and common sense. The threats also reached the non-Muslim communities such as the Christians and the Mandaeans causing people of these religious affiliates to leave Basra due to those unbearable threats," Batool Moosa, a female primary school teacher says.
Mandaeans, a religious community mainly concentrated in southern Iraq, consider John the Baptist to be God’s most honorable messenger. They are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide, and until the 2003 Iraq war, almost all of them lived in Iraq. The 2003 Iraq war reduced the population of Iraqi Mandaeans to approximately 5,000 by 2007.
Mrs. Moosa adds "Most of the women killed, I’m sure, were innocent victims to false vengeful reports."
Locals in the once tolerant city admitted that women were exposed to "unjust" wave of violence in Basra.
Abdul Emam Shakir, a medic, "we now witness an unjust campaign against women who haven’t done something wrong."
As many now Basra locals descending from farmers’ parents who left time ago their villages and resided in the city, some blame the overwhelming male’s superiority complex in the minds of the city new comers to this discrimination against women.
Samah Majeed, an attorney office secretary, told VOI "Generally speaking, the Iraqi male’s personality bears a feeling of superiority towards the female (or the weaker sex as he believes), mingled with concealed and sometimes open feelings of contempt. This characteristic is more spreading in the country rather than in the urban towns."
In this regard, Dr. A. Aziz, a dentist, notices," The Basri women didn’t previously face such escalation in violence except in what is called honor crimes".
"If a girl yielded to the temptation of lust and lost her virginity, she might be liable to tribal punishment carried out by one of her relatives: a brother or a cousin," Dr. Aziz explained.
According to tribal tradition, women committed an "honor sin" is regarded as shame washing.
The old dentist adds "in most honor affairs, the female would be got killed while the male lover wouldn’t be incriminated. But that was a bygone tradition that shrank alongside with the rise of the civilian society."
"Those who killed women for honor crimes in the past are seen angels compared to today’s criminals," Dr. Aziz concludes.
