Honour killings dependence. It is probable that her nieces were forced to watch her murder so they would know not to embrace a ‘western’ lifestyle as she had. The fact that her killing was carried out by her younger male cousin is also significant. In many cases, South Asian boys are taught by their families from an early age that their duty is to police their female relatives. Ghazala Razzaq, the centre co-ordinator at Roshni Asian Women’s Resource Centre in Sheffield, says: “Some young children as old as 14 will tell their mothers what is acceptable when their fathers are not around because they are taught to act in that way.” The ritualised nature of Nazir’s murder recalls other cases. When the Kurdish teenager Heshu Yones was killed, her father stabbed her eleven times in the chest and then cut her throat,34 a powerful gesture which for many rural immigrants has connotations of sheep being slaughtered. The manner of killing may reflect deeply internalised views of women as an asset or form of property. n
Killing of children
In some cases, a husband’s attack on his wife has resulted in the death of their children. In some cases this is done intentionally if male relatives believe the children have been tainted by their mother’s supposed immorality. In 2006 in Accrington, Lancashire, Mohammed Riaz, an immigrant from Pakistan’s highly conservative North-West Frontier Province, killed Caneze Riaz and her four daughters by setting fire to the family home after locking them inside. The girls who died in the blaze were aged 16, 15, 10 and three. The husband, who died from injuries sustained in the fire, had arrived in the UK aged 32 after his wife was sent from the UK to Pakistan to get married. At the time of the killing, the father was under great pressure as his only son, a 17-year old, was in hospital undergoing treatment for leukaemia. Although he had previously criticised his wife for encouraging their children to wear ‘western’ fashions, the final straw came when his eldest daughter told him that she wanted to become a fashion designer. It seems likely that Riaz felt emasculated both by his failure to produce a healthy son but also by his wife’s success; while he worked in a succession of low-paid jobs, his wife was confident and successful, building her own circle of friends and starting to work with women who
34 BBC: ‘Honour killing’ father begins sentence’. 30 September 2003. http://news.bbc. co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3149030.stm
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