Gorilla’s Guides

Mother of three sets fire to herself in desperate bid escape an abusive marriage.

I was just a baby in my cradle when my parents set up an arranged marriage for me.

I remained with my parents until I was 15, when I had my wedding. The year was 1999 – and it was the beginning of my miserable life.

I should have set myself on fire then.

When I got married, I was a secondary school student. From the start, my husband treated me very badly, especially when I told him that I wanted to continue school. Although he had promised me to let me carry on my education after the wedding, as soon as we got married he broke his promise.

My husband is uneducated and can’t even read and write. He is a veteran Kurdish fighter and knows about nothing but guns.

When I told him that I was ready to go back to school, he beat me. I saw no other choice but to forget about my education. Yet that was not the end of my hardships.

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SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Medics in Iraqi Kurdistan said on Saturday that they had seen a surge in violence against women in May, with both so-called “honour” killings and female suicide on the increase.

“At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone,” a doctor said in the region’s second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.

“Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances,” apparently the vctims of “honour” killings.

“Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations — these women were so desperate they set fire to themselves,” the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

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A dark pool of dried blood and a fallen red scarf mark the place where Ronak, who had fled to a woman’s shelter in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah when she was accused of adultery by her husband, was shot three times by a man hiding on the roof of a nearby building.

Ronak was wounded by bullets in the neck, side and leg and only survived after a four-hour operation. She was the latest victim of a huge increase across Iraq in the number of “honour” killings of women for alleged immorality by their own families.

Many are burnt to death by having petrol or paraffin poured over them and set ablaze. Others are shot or strangled. The United Nations estimates that at least 255 women died in honour-related killings in Kurdistan, home to one fifth of Iraqis, in the first six months of 2007 alone.

The murder of women who are deemed to have disobeyed traditional codes of morality is even more common in the rest of Iraq where government authority has broken down since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A surprising reason explaining the massive increase in the number of honour killings is the availability of cheap mobile phones able to take pictures. Men photograph themselves making love to their girlfriends and pass the pictures to their friends. This often turns out to be a lethal act of bravado in a society where premarital or extra-marital sex justifies killing.

The first known case of sex recorded on a mobile leading to murder was in 2004. Film of a boy making love with a 17-year-old girl circulated in the Kurdish capital, Arbil. Two days later she was killed by her family and a week later he was murdered by his.

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“In the past five years it is has got [much] worse. It is difficult to described how terrible it is, how badly we have been pushed back to the dark ages. Women are being beheaded for taking their veil off. Self immolation is rising – women are left with no choice. There is no government body or institution to provide any sort of support. Sharia law is being used to underpin government rule, denying women their most basic human rights.

At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene.

The 19-year-old Iraqi was, according to her father, murdered by her own in-laws, who took her to a picnic area in Dokan and shot her seven times. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her “honour killing” is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a “genocide” against women in the name of religion.

In the latest such case, it was reported yesterday that a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was stabbed to death last month by her father for becoming infatuated with a British soldier serving in southern Iraq.

In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure.

Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase.

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