Honour-based crime up 62%

[Papyrophile]

According to the Family Law Centre, honour-based crime in the UK went up 62% from 2020-2022. For explanation, honour-based crime and abuse mostly affects women from SE Asian or Middle Eastern backgrounds where the cultural traditions are very strongly patriarchal, arranged marriages are routine and women are regarded as less important/valuable than men.

As a feminist, this is extraordinarily distasteful to me but I am not affected at all by it. How do other people see the situation?

I think ' family control crimes'covers it quite well.

"I own your pussy" crimes

It is so outlandish that a woman choosing not to marry brings more 'dishonour' on her family than them raping and murdering her.

@LauderSyme

True but such a view depends on whether you see value in a woman or a daughter's life.

As a bit of an aside, this seems to be a new ' pet' belief of the hard/far left. I read a book recently where the caste system in India was blamed on the BJP, even though its been in existence for thousands of years. Added to that their support of Iran, when fundamentalist Islamism is basically a far Right ideology. Excusing peoples behaviour because the poor lambs can't help themselves when they see the effect of Western Imperialism in the ME is not helping the victims of these crimes, who are overwhelmingly Asian women. As if they don't really matter, their suffering is just another unfortunate side effect of Imperialism.

Thanks. You beat me to it.
IMO, more people are reporting it than before as there are more organsations out there to help them which is good, hence the rise in reported case, but i may be wrong

62% means nothing. What are the actual numbers?

I completely understand your point but I wonder how else we would describe a particular type of violence against women which is based on cultural expectations of women?

I think it’s important to distinguish this type of domestic violence because it’s legal in some countries, is perpetrated by the whole family ( not just the husband) and does affect certain ethnic/ cultural groups.

Yes this is a good option

Interesting piece linked below

For those asking about numbers it says the number of killings "thought" to occur in the UK each year are 12-15, but this is more or less a guess and doesn't take account of those taken abroad to be killed, often to places where the murderers know the chance of real investigation will be small

Disappointing, though, to read about the all too predictable search for someone to blame other than the perpetrators

https://safeguardinghub.co.uk/honour-based-abuse-the-facts/#:~:text=HBA%20crimes%20are%20broad%2C%20ranging,to%2015%20murders%20a%20year.

I also hate the term but it’s important to have an understanding of the background behind these cases , in order to target the communities and cultures where it happens and work on prevention strategies.

Yes, it’s rooted in the belief that a woman’s body holds the honour of her family and husband. It’s horrific

The language used is indicative of the squeamishness in addressing the behaviour of other cultures and the crimes they may be involved in, such as what happened in Rotherham and Newcastle. If we don't have the language to address it then these offensive and ridiculous terms will continue to be used.

This is a very valid point, but there's a difficulty in that the more entrenched members often regard any intervention as an attack, and so the accusations of racism start again and the authorities cower in terror

One obvious answer is to employ culturally appropriate staff to drive initiatives, but I'm reminded of a local Covid scheme where such people were used in an attempt to increase vaccine takeup
It failed due to community pressure on the workers to withdraw, along with complaints that they were being racially targeted

And perhaps another reason for the reported increase could be that - as in Rotherham, etc - the perpetrators have learned that little will be done, and so they feel encouraged to carry on regardless?

I wonder if the stats are available for the % of women murdered (no ‘honour’ here) per background (race/religion/nationality etc) for UK crimes.

Are some culture/religion/race of men more violent and murderous - or is the label ‘honour based’ just so repugnant it jumps out?

The only problem with that is that it can be confused with domestic abuse and types child abuse which then hide the motivation making it less easy to identify the risks maybe family cultural abuse?

I think even using the word honour is wrong! However I do not necessarily think there has been an increase in crimes, instead I suspect women (and it's usually women but there are male cases too) are now more likely to report and the cps more likely to act in more marginal cases.

Whatever the truth behind the statistics, even one case is one too many! Ironically in India love marriages are becoming the norm in cities I read, not sure about other countries in that area.

No OP they won’t have gone up that much, it’s a click baity headline. There is actually no way of knowing since there will be changes in number of women willing to report, appropriate crime tagging by police and actual raw num er of incidents.
Its actually possible the number has gone down.

The name should stay. It’s a very specific type of crime. It’s important to know what we’re dealing with in order to work with it.

if the name is sanitised then we will know even less.

I am Indian by origin. Firstly so called honour based violence is abhorrent and it is appalling that the figures have risen so much in the UK. Many Asian women's groups are focused on this issue. Breaking down barriers which isolate some Asian women, providing refuge and advice. I would ask though that you do not allow legitimate concern for appalling male violence to lapse into easy Asian stereotypes. Across the Indian sub continent there are a vast array of different cultures. Very often our societies are built on strong female cultures and a visit to Mumbai or Delhi might well surprise you in terms of female empowerment.

Yet more male violence.

I can see why people might want to give it a separate category, but it's just more male violence against women and girls.

I'd call it what it is. If it happens to be a rise in crime against women specifically among a given religious sector or minority community then that is worth mentioning. But there is no honour in it and no violence against women should ever be elevated through that word.

If there is a rise of domestic violence by Muslim men on Muslim women, we should say so.

Coercive control exists as a crime. It is this, fundamentally. I don't think it needs another name which alludes to it being a problem specific to a given subsection of society.

People - usually men - who attack women for daring to act autonomously come from all walks of life - all religions, all races and classes. I worry that giving it a special name, even if that name doesn't carry the repulsive positive connotation of 'honour', others it.

It's useful to note if there's a rise in a given crime within a certain sector of society, but to rebrand that crime as something that only exists within that community is a lie.

There definitely needs to be a name for these kinds of crime.

I don't think anyone really believes that an honour crime is actually honourable, but OK if some people think it does give that impression, then another expression could be found.

I definitely don't agree that there should be no way to express it. Looking at the reasons why a crime was committed is not the same as justifying that crime.