[NYTr] Iraq: “Bad” Women Being Raped and Killed

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS News via Common Dreams - Dec 18, 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/18/5883/

Iraq: "Bad" Women Raped and Killed

by Ali al-Fadhily

BAGHDAD - Women are being killed by militia groups in southern Iraq for
not conforming to strict Islamic ways, the police say. And, increased
threats from militia groups is driving many women away from their homes.

Basra police chief Gen. Jalil Hannoon has told reporters and Arab TV
channels that at least 40 women have been killed during the past five
months in the southern city.

“We are sure there are many more victims whose families did not report
their killing for fear of scandal,” Gen. Hannoon said.

The militias dominated by the Shia Badr Organisation and the Mehdi Army
are leading imposition of strict Islamic rules. The enforcement of
these ways comes at a time when British troops have left Basra, the
biggest town in the south, to the Iraqi government.

The Shia-dominated Iraqi government is seen as providing tacit and
sometimes direct support to militias. The Badr Organisation answers to
the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the Shia bloc in the Iraqi
government. The Mehdi army is the militia of anti-occupation Shia
cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Women who do not wear the hijab are becoming prime targets of militias,
residents say. Many women say they are threatened with death if they do
not obey.

“Militiamen approached us to tell us we must wear the hijab and stop
wearing make-up,” college student Zahra Alwan who fled Basra for
Baghdad recently told IPS. “They are imitating the Iranian Revolution
Guards, and we believe they receive orders from the Islamic Republic
(of Iran) to do so.”

Graffiti in red on walls across Basra warns women against wearing
make-up and stepping out without covering their bodies from head to
toe, Alwan said.

“The situation in Baghdad is not very different,” Mazin Abdul Jabbar,
social researcher at Baghdad University told IPS. “All universities are
controlled by Islamic militiamen who harass female students all the
time with religious restrictions.”

Jabbar said this is one reason that “many families have stopped sending
their daughters to high schools and colleges.”

Earlier this year Iraq’s Ministry of Education found that more than 70
percent of girls and young women no longer attend school or college.

Several women victims were accused of being “bad” before they were
abducted, residents say. Most abducted women are later found dead. The
bodies of several were found in garbage dumps, showing signs of rape
and torture. Several bodies had a note attached saying the woman was
“bad”, according to several residents who did not give their name.

A Shia cleric in Baghdad spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity to
defend killings.

“We are an Islamic country and we must commit to the restrictions of
our religion,” he said. “We must not allow corruption to invade our
families under flag of freedom and such nonsense.”

Sunni clerics offered a different view.

“It is against Islamic regulations for women to expose their hair and
bodies,” Sheikh Tariq al-Abdaly told IPS in Baghdad. “But this is not
an Islamic state, and so all we can do is to advise women, same as we
advise men, to follow those regulations. In any case, punishment for
such mistakes should certainly be much less than execution.”

Iraqi liberals are deeply frustrated by the lack of personal freedom.
“We are so disappointed with the loss of what there was of Iraqi
women’s achievements under a regime (of former president Saddam
Hussein) that we saw as retarded,” Salim Mahmood of the Iraqi Communist
Party in Baghdad told IPS.

“The Americans promised they would make Iraq a symbol of liberty and
prosperity. Now it has neither.”

© 2007 Inter Press Service