Murder in the Name of Honor (9 page)

Identities of the participants in this forum could be withheld and so many ordinary people felt they were able to speak freely and in safety. A man named Michael Ibrahim wrote, ‘May the blood of every dishonourably murdered girl haunt those of our deputies who voted down the abolishment.'

Sultan Abu Mariam spoke for many people when he wrote, ‘Let's move and do something for our country and our children's future … Jordan is our beloved country and deserves the best out of us so let's fight for a better life, so we know that we earned it.' Batir Wardam, a Jordanian columnist, agreed, calling the deputies ‘a disgrace to our intelligence'.

In December of that year, we met with the Speaker of the Lower House, Abdul Hadi Majali, to hand him the 15,300 signatures we'd collected in less than six months. Majali criticized the government, saying it had acted hastily and had ‘caused the intent of the draft to be misunderstood by the MPs', a statement that I published in an article for
The Jordan Times
on 19 December 1999.

Majali happened to be out of the country when the law was debated in the Lower House. He told us he had since discussed the
issue with many MPs and they thought that if a man killed his wife after surprising her in the act of adultery, then the law stated that he would be sentenced to fifteen years. ‘That was the main reason they rejected the draft,' he told me, in exasperation.

Almost a month later, the legal committee at the Upper House upheld the Lower House's decision. They debated the idea of giving women the same leniency as men were receiving in Article 340, but decided to do nothing in the end.

But there was one final ace up our sleeve. The Senate, our Supreme Court, is appointed by the King and, thanks in part to royal influence, they upheld the draft bill to amend Article 340 and returned it to the Lower House for a second debate. Senator Leila Sharaf, a much-respected female politician and activist in Jordan, said that keeping Article 340 in the Penal Code was an insult to society. ‘Do you think that women refrain from adultery merely to avoid punishment? Why is it always that a woman is the only one blamed for adultery? Doesn't she have a partner who should be punished?'

On the other side, Deputy Mohammad Rafat from the Balqa Governorate criticized the senators' decision: ‘The Lower House has already taken its decision, and there is nothing to add. The senators have only worsened the situation.'

Around this time I spoke with the experienced political analyst and adviser to the late King Hussein, Adnan Abu Odeh, who described the Lower House MPs as traditionalists who came from a pastoral culture. He told me during the interview that they would never amend Article 340 because they wanted to keep the status quo. If they failed to keep the status quo, then they would be replaced by people who could.

‘They would be afraid of people saying this deputy voted against the law. “Let's see,” they would say. “What he would do if his daughter did something wrong? What would he do?” This means someone else would substitute him in his own constituency,' Abu Odeh said.

Former Jordanian Prime Minister Dr Fayez Tarawneh also told me in an interview that the MPs ‘did not do a good job on this issue and were immature because … people were holding a peaceful demonstration to present them with signatures.'

Dr Tarawneh said the problem was that many deputies did not understand the issue and did not even bother to try and investigate or discuss the issue properly. ‘When it comes to issues like this, deputies revert back to being individuals, instead of going back to their constituency to ask people what they think. They only go back to their constituency at election time.'

Both Abu Odeh and Dr Tarawneh agreed that the royal family was sincere in its quest for change on this issue. Abu Odeh told me, ‘Although the Jordanian monarchy are not traditionalists personally, they are politically because their powerbase is made up of traditionalists. The problem is their powerbase. It pulls them back and they don't want to provoke it,' Abu Odeh said.

At the second hearing, held on 26 January 2000, the debate was over all too quickly. The only deputy who spoke out in favour of referring the article to the Legal Committee for examination was Zarqa MP Bassam Haddadin.

Several deputies said the entire Lower House had already voted once with a sweeping majority to reject the proposal, and that they were not prepared to discuss it again. Sure enough, they voted against the draft amendment again before sending it to the Upper House. It was clear that nothing was going to change any time soon. We had been defeated. Despite this, I felt that our work had proven to be a major success, thanks to the hard work of our committee and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Together, we made the debate on so-called honour crimes public and ongoing in Jordan and the subject still regularly filled newspaper columns – expressing both support and opposition.

Very much on the side opposed to reform was
Arab Al-Yawm
columnist Muwafaq Mahaddin, who wrote twice, in November
2000 and January 2001, criticizing financial support provided by the UK's Foreign Ministry to a local NGO called Sisterhood is Global Institute (SIGI), which was headed at the time by the lawyer Asma Khader.

In the first of these columns, written in November 2000, Mahaddin wrote that his readers ‘would be surprised to know that women in Britain are in more need of this financial support than women in Jordan. It would be good if the Jordanian Embassy in London would offer support to women in the UK as well.' Many Jordanian columnists were incensed and wrote several opinion pieces criticizing the UK's interference.

During the first few months of 2000 the debate on Article 340 and so-called honour crimes dominated internet chat rooms. I read the comments criticizing and supporting me without comment until I saw that people were starting to blame me for tarnishing Jordan's image and for ‘threatening Jordan's tourist industry'.

I couldn't let that one pass and so I wrote:

I think every country in the world has its own problems. For example, the crime rate in the USA is one of the highest in the world. But you still see people exerting the utmost efforts to go and live or invest there and, if I am not mistaken, I think that the USA has one of the highest numbers of tourists visiting each year … I would like to assure you all that I would never do anything to harm my beloved country …

My work and the committee's work is not ‘self-serving' as some have described it; we are trying to serve and keep women safe.

Two days after the battle for Article 340 had been ‘lost', Prince Ali took the extraordinary step of speaking out against the decision. Using an internet chat room, he made an extraordinary appeal for people to take part in a public march to Parliament in protest at the deputies' decision to vote against the amendments:

As a Muslim, a Hashemite and a Jordanian citizen, I was dismayed to learn that honour killings are still condoned by some of our countrymen. My father the late King Hussein was resolute in his stance against these crimes and my brother King Abdullah and I remain just as determined to end honour killings in Jordan. We support the struggle to change the law, a struggle that began with Rana Husseini who had the courage to expose the truth …

Therefore, we have decided to march to Parliament to protest against honour killings. Please join us, each and every one of you, so that we may make democracy in our country a reality and voice our opinion towards a better Jordan.
⁶

To me, this email was the greatest thing that could have happened. I couldn't believe it – the Prince was going to march with us, in a march he had initiated! Perhaps not surprisingly, we had
previously been refused permission to organize any kind of march, and although we hadn't given up, we did wonder if it was ever going to happen. Now, with the support of the Prince, who was able to obtain the necessary official clearance, we knew it was most definitely going to happen. It was just the most incredible feeling.

Many others praised the Prince for his move and pledged to be there with their families and friends. My friend and gender and development expert Randa Naffa, who was one of the first to respond to the Prince, spoke for most of us when she wrote: ‘Thank you … your presence will be a valuable support to all the believers of a better life for women in Jordan … Any democracy cannot be fully consolidated unless just and fair laws exist for the right of all!'

Our committee members were divided on the issue. Some feared that the Prince's participation might cause a backlash. Others were excited that a public march was finally going to take place – especially as we had already lodged a request in November 1999 to organize a silent ‘funeral procession' from the Christian and Muslim cemeteries in East Amman to Parliament.

Many of the victims of so-called honour crimes had been buried in unmarked graves, without normal tradition. We wanted to give them a proper funeral while presenting a painful reminder to the Lower House that their inaction meant these murders would continue.

The committee buzzed like a beehive as we tried to persuade as many people as possible to join us. Our press release said:

We call on each one of you to come and join us to express our voice – to make it clear that all Jordanians are against so-called honour crimes and the cold-blooded murder of women and girls. To insist that each one of us has individual rights and that everyone has the right to a fair trial and is entitled to a legal defence. We are counting on your support to prove to the Lower House that they are turning a blind eye to what Jordanians want.

This time, thanks to our royal backers, we won the support of the Mayor of Amman, who even arranged the printing of banners. However, the government remained resolutely against us and forbade Jordan's local TV from advertising the event.

Prince Ali had chosen 14 February. I remember that damp and cloudy morning very clearly. I walked with my friends to the starting point at Sports City. As we arrived, I gasped in astonishment. Thousands of people had already gathered in the huge courtyard behind the football stadium. Dozens of buses were standing by to transport us to Parliament.

It was a huge crowd, the largest I had ever seen in Jordan. Many people were dressed in their traditional tribal robes. Among them were women's rights activists, high school girls, lawyers and civil servants. My heart sang when I saw cameras and journalists absolutely everywhere, from all over the world, and that they were already busy filming and interviewing.

People were carrying black flags to commemorate the murdered women; there were countless banners which read ‘Say No to Honour Crimes' and anti-Article 340 slogans were everywhere. It was an overwhelming sight. We had gone from nothing to this truly extraordinary event in Jordan's capital in just a few months. I really believed then that we would win our battle.

I searched the crowds looking for Prince Ali. I finally found the young prince, dressed in a black leather jacket with a black jumper. He was with Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad, King Abdullah's cousin and his adviser on tribal affairs, who wore a red kufia.

It was a dream come true for me. Here were two princes standing shoulder to shoulder with their subjects, fighting for the same cause. Prince Ali greeted me warmly and said he was delighted with the turnout (there were about four thousand people behind us at this point, with more joining the procession every minute). ‘Rana,' he said, ‘I would be very grateful if you would escort us to our meetings with the heads of the Upper and Lower House and the
Prime Minister.' I was hardly going to refuse! I checked and rechecked that I had my notebook with me, as I wanted to record every word and make sure a true account of the day's historic events was read by as many people as possible.

The level of support was tremendous. At the rally, MP Noman Ghuweiri, also a tribal leader in Zarqa, condemned so-called honour killings: ‘Only the rule of God should apply in such cases. These crimes do not occur within tribes. The Bedouin women are well respected and their rights are preserved and secured.'

Some other tribal leaders spoke negatively about the issue during the march, including tribal leader Trad Fayez, who was quoted by the Associated Press as saying: ‘There is no harm in killing whoever is proved to have committed a bad act … A woman is like an olive tree. When its branch catches woodworm, it has to be chopped off so that the society stays clean and pure. We will not become like Europe and western countries and condone dissipation. We are tribes and devout Muslims. We stick to our customs.'
⁷

We reached the Parliament building and crossed through the masses to talk with the Speaker of the Upper House. I was just behind the head of the delegation when we reached the door but as I tried to follow them inside, I found myself caught up in a crush as people tried to squeeze through the doors.

Prince Ghazi, who had already entered the building, also with great difficulty, looked back and saw me losing the battle to get inside. He shouted at the guards to help me in. It didn't help that I was carrying a black flag, but somehow I squeezed myself between various people until I popped through the doors like a champagne cork and flew unceremoniously towards the princes; I was about to fall flat on my face when Prince Ghazi caught me.

The Speaker of the Upper House and former Prime Minster Zeid Rifai welcomed us into his office. Prince Ali told him that we were there to express the will of the Jordanian people to cancel Article 340 because it did not reflect our customs, traditions or
Islamic Sharia. Rifai praised our efforts and described the participation of the two princes as marking a new phase for the human rights movement in Jordan.

We then headed with the two princes to the office of the Speaker of the Lower House Abdul Hadi Majali, where several deputies were waiting for us. Prince Ali greeted them and came straight to the point. ‘I feel ashamed when we know that such a law exists,' he told Majali and the other deputies, ‘a law that was opposed by King Hussein and King Abdullah.' Prince Ghazi added, ‘There is no basis for Article 340 in our religion or culture, and we have great hope that the deputies will reconsider their decision.'