Netherlands: Women offenders in "honor" murder

I think this article is a bit misleading. In the Arab culture, it is only the women who can hurt the family's honor and it is only the men who are responsible for restoring it. In many cases the women in the family help out.

Women are not exclusively victims of "honor" murder. They can also be active participants in the violent forms of restoring one's honor.

The police corps of Haaglanden and Zuid-Holland-Zuid came to this conclusion in their final report about honor related violence, which was published yesterday. In practice it seems that men are also regularly victims of honor related violence.

Honor murder means that a family member is punished for soiling the family's honor. It is necessary to get more insight into this issue and that is only possible with better information. Guidance for police agents, workers of the public prosecution and other authorities is necessary and more attention needs to be devoted to honor murder at the Dutch Police Academy.

The Haaglanden police, the public prosecution in The Hague and the Vereniging Federatie
Opvang (emergency services federation), developed a protocol in October for dealing with honor murder. The goal of which is especially to beter protect the victims. There are agreements in the protocol about what to do in crisis situations. The final report was an evaulation of this protocol.

The report shows that modern communication devices play a greater role. For example, several girls made contact on the internet with boys. That was seen by their families as dishonorable behavior. Mobile phones could also cause much suffering, for example in the form of threatening SMS or indecent photos. Family secrets can also be spread much faster with the help of these modern devices.

According to the police it is vital that a plan for dealing with the issue would be devised before the police gets involved or eventually searches for an intermediary.

Source: Nederlands Dagblad (Dutch)