Perpetrators of Honour Killings Should Go To Jail! Sharmeen Tells CNN’s Amanpour
Friday, February 26th, 2016 6:27:30 by modousarr
CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour, during an interview, asks renowned filmmaker, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy “How is this going down in your home country? You keep poking your lens where it’s least welcome.”
Chinoy passionately replies, “I think it’s very important to have these difficult conversations. We are not going to make the country a better place if we keep glorifying the good things about it. We must talk about issues that confront Pakistan ? and there are many issues that confront the country,”
“A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”, Chinoy’s harrowing documentary on honour killings has been nominated for an Oscar this year in the Best short Documentary category. This is not her first nomination for an Oscar though; back in 2012, she had won a golden statuette for a documentary on the dilemmas of acid attack survivors entitled “Saving Face”.
The filmmaker has been criticized for exposing the negative side of Pakistan. Her response to those critics is “It’s very important to have these difficult conversations… It’s very important to shake the status quo.” She added “The most hopeful thing about this film is that it started a national discourse in Pakistan about honour killings ? something we desperately needed to have,”
During the interview, Chinoy tells Amanpour that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “will introduce legislation as early as next week, talking about how honour killings needs to be stopped, that there is no place for them in society”.
She went on to add, “He has said there is no place for honour killings in Islam… For a prime minister of Pakistan to make such a statement, it sends a very positive signal. It doesn’t mean honour killings will end tomorrow but it does mean that the leadership is taking this very seriously and they will have laws that will counter it,”
Amanpour enquires, “Even if PM Nawaz stands up for law and order and basic women’s rights, what about what happens in villages and homes? “ It’s families taking the law into their own hands.”
Chinoy concurs. “Right now, as the law stands, when a father kills his daughter or a brother kills his sister, the family can forgive. The wife can forgive her husband, the parents can forgive their son, so very few people go to jail for honour killings in Pakistan.”
She explains that there are hundreds and thousands of village, town and city residents out there who are know of others that have committed these “honour killings” and murdered women in their family without consequence ? this enhances their belief “that there is nothing wrong with killing women”
The filmmaker emphasizes the importance for a law that will exterminate the practice of honour killings. “We need to start sending people to jail, we need to start making examples of them,” she adds, “If people don’t go to jail for it, how will they start thinking it is a serious crime?”
Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=52347
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