Sadly, we know of this young lady only by the horrific manner of her death. So little is known about Du'a's short life that we don't even know if the year of her birth was 1989 or 1990.
We know that in Yezidi, the faith she practiced for her short seventeen years of life, Du'a means prayer.
A version of the alleged details leading to Du'a's murder can be read here.
The only certainty is that this young girl was stoned to death at the behest of her own family. Quite likely, the most barbaric and cruel act of violence I've ever read or seen video of, this brutal murder was not only "legal" but condoned as an "honor" killing. Where is the "honor" in honor killing?
Du'a Khalil expected to be killed -- please, stop and think about that for a moment -- she expected death at the hands of those who brought her into this world for the high and unholy sin of wanting to marry a young man who was an "outsider" to her family. We aren't talking medieval history here. This girl was stoned to death in 2007, exactly one year ago. And it didn't stop there. Hundeds of "honor" killings and "honor" suicides have occurred since Du'a's bloody, broken body was cremated with a dog to signify how dirty and damned she was for her "crime."
There is nothing in the Koran, the book of basic Islamic teachings, that permits or sanctions honor killings. The view of women as property with no rights of their own is deeply rooted in Islamic culture, Tahira Shahid Khan, a professor specializing in women's issues at the Aga Khan University in Pakistan, wrote in Chained to Custom.
Violence against women and girls represents a global health, economic development, and human rights problem of epidemic proportions and cuts across all countries, social groups, ethnicities, religions, and socioeconomic classes. In fact, at least one out of every three women worldwide are beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime, with rates reaching 70% in some countries.
Violence against women and girls is a human rights violation that causes physical, sexual and psychological harm or suffering, including rape, domestic violence, acid burning, dowry deaths, so-called honor killings, human trafficking, and female genital cutting. It devastates the lives of millions of women around the globe. (Source: Amnesty International).
Reports submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights show that honor killings have occurred in Bangladesh, Great Britain, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Sweden, Turkey, and Uganda. In countries not submitting reports to the UN, the practice was condoned under the rule of the fundamentalist Taliban government in Afghanistan, and has been reported in Iraq and Iran.
In Turkey at least a third and up to a half of all women are estimated to be victims of physical violence. Within their families, they are hit, raped, and in some cases even killed or forced to commit suicide. Husbands, brothers, fathers and sons are responsible for most of these abuses. Sometimes they are acting on the orders of family councils, gatherings of family or clan elders who decide the "punishment" for women deemed to have infringed traditional codes of honor.
Tradition all too often serves as a pretext for acts of brutality against women for daring to choose how to lead their lives. The underlying cause of violence is discrimination, which denies women equality with men in every area of life. Violence against women is widely tolerated and even endorsed by community leaders and at the highest levels of the government and judiciary.
The authorities rarely carry out thorough investigations into women's complaints about violent attacks, murders or apparent suicides of women. Courts still reduce the sentences of rapists if they promise to marry their victim, despite recent moves to end the practice. (Source: Amnesty International.)
But while honor killings have elicited considerable attention and outrage, human rights activists argue that they should be regarded as part of a much larger problem of violence against women.
In India, for example, more than 5,000 brides die annually because their dowries are considered insufficient, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Crimes of passion, which are treated extremely leniently in Latin America, are the same thing with a different name, some rights advocates say. In Pakistan . . .
Our field exposure and researching shows that in these situations, the factor of honor provides just a cover and we can trace material forces are behind each murder. The term honor is used to invoke the article of "sudden provocation" in the Pakistan Penal Code for the mitigation of the punishment.
What if men assert their right to decide about their marriage? The maximum punishment is a brief period of social boycott. It ends after few years and gets forgotten. In our culture, the male blood is more precious and valued then the females. Since property, inheritance and asset management is the hands of men socially and religiously the power is in the hands of men. These factors have given birth to the mind set for the 'son preference’. The lives of the male members of the family are more precious than the values such as obedience, chastity and honor that are meant for the women to follow. (Source: Honour Killings --- Research Paper on the situational context in Pakistan. Ed: This is an absolutely fascinating research paper, which I encourage you to read in full. --aja)
The ethos of individualism has become so fundamental to the Western world view that most of us cannot imagine any other way of conceiving human existence. But in fact, there are billions of people on earth — including most of the world’s Muslims — that view our obsession with individualism as positively bizarre.
As Rutgers scholar Robin Fox wrote in a brilliant essay — excerpted in the November 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine — this explains why so many Arabs marry their cousins. In tribal societies, your blood relations are the only people you can trust.
This fundamental difference in outlook explains much of what we find barbaric about traditional Muslim cultural practices. Honor killings — to take a newsworthy example — strike Westerners as an especially hideous form of murder. But that’s because we think of people as individuals. If you instead see a woman primarily as a low-status breeding agent of her patriarch’s clan, everything changes. By taking up with an unapproved male, she is nullifying whatever value she once had as a human. In fact, her life has negative value in the sense that her shameful lifestyle is an ongoing humiliation to the men expected to enforce discipline within the clan’s ranks. Source: Human Nature and Human Rights by Robin Scott; Harper's.
Remember Du'a.
1. Spread The Word. Write a letter to your local papers, raising the issue of so-called 'honour' killing.
2. Blog for Du'a.
3. Send an email to the Kurdistan Regional Government asking what progress there has been in finding and prosecuting Du'a's killers and what they intend to do to reduce the rate of 'honour' killings in Kurdistan (there have been at least 300 other victims since Du'a's death.)
4. Tell someone about it. Whether your friend, relative or colleague, use April 7th to tell Du'a's story and highlight the inhumanity of 'honour' killings across the world.
5. Read a good book. The anthology written in memory of Du'a Khalil, Nothing But Red will be launched on April 7th with proceeds going to Equality Now.
6. Wear Du'a's heart next to yours. This shirt was created by Joss Whedon. An alternate to buying the shirt is a free downloadable iron-on available here.
Our duty as activists is to expose and denounce as human rights violations those practices and policies that silence and subordinate women. We reject specific legal, cultural, or religious practices by which women are systematically discriminated against, excluded from political participation and public life, segregated in their daily lives, raped in armed conflict, beaten in their homes, denied equal divorce or inheritance rights, killed for having sex, forced to marry, assaulted for not conforming to gender norms, and sold into forced labor.
Arguments that sustain and excuse these human rights abuses - those of cultural norms, "appropriate" rights for women, or western imperialism - barely disguise their true meaning: that women's lives matter less than men's. Cultural relativism, which argues that there are no universal human rights and that rights are culture-specific and culturally determined, is still a formidable and corrosive challenge to women's rights to equality and dignity in all facets of their lives. (Source: Human Rights Watch).
Dua was 17 years old. Her brutal execution lasted two hours. Most of it was filmed on cell phones. The footage, which circulated first among Mosul residents and later on the internet, showed the girl on the ground surrounded by a frenzied crowd. Young men beat and kicked her, first throwing small stones and then fetching bigger ones and large concrete bricks. Bleeding heavily, she tried to protect her face with one hand and cover her naked legs with the other after her dress was torn. After a while, she stopped moving. As she lay still, the cheering crowd continued to throw stones at her.
Video of Du'a's murder (extremely graphic violence).
Please consider sending an email to your Senators through Amnesty International to ask them to support The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA).
Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.
All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now. (Source: Whedonesque.)
Sonnet by Kossack crazyworld -- many thanks!
Dua Khali Aswad (a Yazidi girl)
Laughter and cameras define her death
Oh, were it rage! But its contempt, they spit
Her face, a masque of blood, blocking her breath
Death? Her family’s hands deliver it.
What religion is this? Whose commandment?
What devout Yazidi finds heaven here?
Beat to death a girl, leave her bloody, bent
Commandment? No. Its a crime anywhere.
Their defense? "Defiler of tradition!"
But their act blasphemes and disgraces
Not religion, their ecstatic vision
Tradition? Just hatred in their faces.
So she goes, from child to woman, blood red
As cowards, not men, send her to death’s bed
==Tom Begich
