UN General Assembly: Summary execution of queers okay
 

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people were once again subject to the whims of homophobia and religious and cultural extremism this week, thanks to a United Nations vote that removed “sexual orientation” from a resolution that protects people from arbitrary executions. In other words, the UN General Assembly this week voted to allow LGBT people to be executed without cause.

According to the International Gay and Lesbians Human Rights Commission, the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee on Social, Cultural and Humanitarian issues removed “sexual orientation” from a resolution addressing extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions this past week in a vote that was overwhelming represented by a majority of African, Middle East and Carribean nations. For a UN committee that addresses human rights questions that affect people all over the world, by removing protections for LGBT persons from a category of arbitrary executions, belies the objective and purpose of a committee whose focus this year is “on the examination of human rights questions,” according to its website.

Whole article here

I think that any and all discussions of cultural relativism should be filtered through the above. Imagine, if you will, that you are an Ugandan queer. Which do you think would be more important to you, the cultural integrity of your nation (e.g. if the way they interpret Christianity is that queers should be killed, that's the culture) or your right to exist? Can we all, at minimum, agree that whatever we might think of the death penalty as punishment for crime (not a discussion I want to have right now) that people should not be subject to summary execution merely for being queer?

What's more, we cannot look to the West or the North or the First World as the problem here. The arguments made by the nation's themselves are that homosexuality is a violation of their local culture or an imposition of the West. Neither colonialism nor imperialism can explain this. This one has to be laid, firmly, at the feet of the nations that voted in favor of executing queer people.

Cheers
Aj

Yes, this would be where I have to kick cultural relatism to the curb (actually have some other areas in which I feel this way). I think your putting this at the feet of these nations is right on.

This is so very disturbing. Things like "without cause" or "at will" (such as in employment contracts) really mean "without rights" as far as I am concerned.

Now, given the how far the obsessional right-wing religious fanatics have worked their way into US culture at large (can only speak from this vantage point, but know others can from other countries), I see this as something they will use as further rationalization of their bigotry, fear and hatred of queer communities to romove any and all of the legal gains (though certainly not enough) that have been fought for for decades by activists.

I read this and see so much more loss for us in the future if we don't get a handle on just how serious this is and build coalitions politically and align as one unified force. This is from the United Nations!!

I think the United States of America has no credibility when we have gone against the UN on wars, secret prisons, breaking of the Geneva Convention, torture and not paying our dues. Not to mention thinking we run the world.

Many countries see this behavior of torture, wars for no reason and secret prisons as worse than executing queers.

I am very sad to see this happen, but not surprised.

And sosososososososo thankful that I do not live in Uganda.

For the US to have any sway over the UN, we have a ton of work to do as a nation, to regain ANY credibility.

doesn't surprise me a bit. they're fuckin' maniacs.

Amazing... and goes directly to what this really means! Not just something "out there" happening to other people! If you can, let us know what response, if any, you receive.

I'm sure that many nations do see it that way. I'm sure that there are plenty of nations--all the ones that voted to remove sexual orientation--that do not see any moral problem with execution of queers. I'm not talking about this from the point of view of "we're so great, they're so horrible". I'm talking about this from the point of view of *regardless* of our behavior, certain things are morally repugnant. Summary execution of people because they are different has got to be at the top of that list.

Was our invasion of Iraq justified? No. Does that mean that somehow, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was justified--even in a post hoc fashion? No, because wars of aggression are immoral--not because the United States does them but because anyone does them. I'm not surprised by this and you know I'm not a jingoistic, "America uber alles" but we in the West have *got* to get things back on an even ethical keel.

If the United States were, in fact, a Rawlsian utopia, acknowledged by all people as a place where unfairness cannot even be contemplated much less actually practiced it would not change the fact that this action at the UN is unjustifiable and an invitation to commit crimes against humanity. If the United States were no more advanced than it was in, say, 1900 this would still hold. The horrors visited upon Europe by the Germans and China and Korea by the Japanese during WWII were not diminished one bit by racial segregation in the United States. Were we right with our own people? Not by even the most generous definition but that doesn't mean that what the Germans or Japanese did was at all mitigated by our own not being right.

We, as Americans, exhibit a callousness to the plight of others every time we utter the words "well, we do this here so who are we to say that it's wrong when they do that there". I am willing to bet that every person living in a nation where the state kills queers would prefer to be someplace that doesn't happen--either there or here. We cannot wait for perfect justice to obtain here before we can be justified to be outraged at injustice someplace else. Firstly, it means that we will turn a consistent blind eye to injustice elsewhere and secondly, every excuse we make undercuts the moral force of our argument here.

If I could change one thing about where liberalism has gone these last 30 years it would be this: we lost sight of the fact that we were involved in a struggle that was not just political but moral. The movement for queer civil rights is a moral struggle with political dimensions, not a political struggle with an ancillary moral dimension. Because a queer in Uganda can be killed for being queer, I am Ugandan. Because a dissident in China can be imprisoned for speaking out against the government, I am Chinese. Because a journalist in Russia who writes an unfavorable story can be assassinated, I am Russian. Because an Afghani can be blown to bits by a drone, I am Afghani. Because an Egyptian can be killed for starting a political party, I am Egyptian. Wherever injustice is done and I am aware of it, I must stand up and be counted as being in the court of justice and not in the host of injustice. I must not make excuses for injustice there because of injustice here.

No nation, really, has credibility by the standards you mention above. Israel doesn't. The United Kingdom doesn't. France doesn't. Nor does Spain. Canada doesn't. Germany doesn't. Russia most certainly doesn't. Iran? nope. China? Not hardly. Pakistan? Not in the least bit. India? Nope. I suppose maybe Iceland or Greenland might but that's probably because I can't think of anything either nation has done recently.

Cheers
Aj

Did the USA actually vote for it?

Look at the things the US has done to many of the nations who voted against it. For 100's of years. Why should they respect our opinions?

We need to lead by example and make sure our allies are there for voting!

But who made them maniacs? if indeed this is true.

I agree with you. It is repugnant. I am horrified.

This is a "yes...and"...answer

I just think that if we as voters stood on our government to respect and follow UN rulings no matter who our President is and if we were not as creepy as we are, and if we did not have a huge hand in the sad state many of the countries who voted for this horrible injustice are in, maybe the US would have had more sway with the voting Nations.

I hate it that this is going on, I hate the shape our own country is in. I grew up in a Fascist country and almost throw up every time I hear on this website "well thats what North Korea does" when discussing what is right and wrong...morally.

I guess I hate it most that my own country is not doing more, and that we have zero high ground clout to be able to say "executing ANYONE is morally wrong".

I want us to have never lied to the UN, to have made the original League of Nations work....etc etc. I know, I am too idealistic.

In conclusion I blame the US and the UK and France and Holland and the countries who in colonizing and making war for personal gain left and are leaving these countries looking for someone to blame for their problems. Queers are an easy target.

Who do we blame for ours?

It shouldn't matter what our opinions are on the matter. Each delegate, at the behest of and full knowledge of their foreign minister and head of government and/or head of state cast this vote themselves. They cast a vote knowing what they were voting for. They cast this vote knowing the implications and their national motivations for doing so. They cast a vote to remove queers from the umbrella of protection so that they need not worry about AI or the IRC or the UN looking for their shoulders should they decide to undertake an orgy of violence against queers in their nation. The United States didn't make them take that vote.

These are full moral agents from nations that are capable of acting as full moral agents. NOTHING we could ever say or do would make their vote okay in my book. Nothing. if we were bombing their nations randomly because it was Monday their vote would be immoral. If we yearly sent each nation our GDP as foreign aid, their vote would STILL be immoral. If we pretended that they didn't exist at all, their vote would remain immoral.

Cheers
Aj

I agree. It is horrible and imoral.

I just dont know how writing angry letters to US delegates is going to help anything.

I believe morally that executing anyone is wrong.

Anyone.

Ever.

I thought I heard Hilary say that we with held our vote near the end. I just don't understand what the point is of a UN if everyone does'nt have to vote, or is too afraid to. Where was everyone else? :confused:

We could ask the same of our Congress or of each of us. Where was everyone when it came time to vote?

I need to read up on when we voted and if we held off till the end...why.

Like anything else this is political and for some it is easier to not have an opinion, lest they be seen as Queer or liberal or something equally shocking. For some, it was not an important vote. Some may have passive agressively been trying to send the US a message to leave them alone.

The only way the UN was ever going to work the way we think it is supposed to, was for the US and the rest of the Security Council follow the rules and pay the dues and we have not. I think it was doomed to ever be what I want it to be when the League of Nations was shot down by Congress for sheer political reasons all those years ago.


I have a question. Why is our problem just with Queers being executed?

I was also using Queer as an umbrella term for Gay, Lesbian, Intersexed, Butch Femme, Trans, etc. :)

I am horrified that anyone is EVER executed.

I grew up in a country where people dissapeared all the time never to be heard from again. I think we should be just as angry about all of it, not just people like us. Gay people sat in prison and many were executed. Dead people were in the streets.

I think we are more horrified because its is people like us who are being executed, I think we should be horrified that anyone is executed.

Yes it is horrible to me that this vote went as it did, but even more horrible to me is that there is a list of groups it is ok to execute at all.

I asked that question as a Queer Femme Lesbian, sorry my use of Queer made your stomach feel upset. All of this makes mine pretty upset too.

In a perfect world I would wish for the US to have the good reputation to be able to stand up and say executing anyone is morally wrong. But we can't becasue we execute people and lie to the UN and start wars for no reason.

I wish we could censure Uganda and they would have to stop this.

That there is a list of who it is OK and not ok to excute makes my head need to explode.

It is horribly sad. I get the relationship to the word troops. We need to bring those kids home! I could go on and on.....

Maybe if there is a way to send messages to the UN delegates from other countries, you could let us know? Or we can find out how to help groups against these executions in those countries financially?

I am against the death penalty and executions of any kind, and was trying to ask why we in general only get this upset when it is people like us being executed?

Thank you!

It is likely an issue that will have to be fought country by country without them feeling like the USA is trying to force our way of life down their throats.

Because the UN is in the USA, I do tend to expect more of the USA in regards to the UN. But as we saw during the last administration in the USA, we fall way short.

I appreciate you putting together the list, and for discussing this!

Maybe many small voices together can make a difference.

I'm curious, when do these nations become full moral agents? When, in other words, can we hold them responsible for their actions instead of holding other nations--Western nations all--responsible. I know you do not intend this but what you are doing is making these nations children, poor little backwards brown and yellow people who, were it not for the intervention of Europeans, wouldn't even think of such a thing. Poppycock!

They aren't looking for queers as an excuse. Their *religion* teaches them that queers should be killed. Not colonialism or imperialism. Most of these nations threw off the shackles of empire four or more decades ago. At *some* point we have to start treating them as full moral agents.

These nations would have thought this up if they had *never* had contact with a Westerner. It is instructive to note that each of those nations has *also* voted against anything related to women's rights in the UN, claiming--of course--local cultural integrity. They didn't learn sexism and patriarchy from the colonial powers, that was in play when the Western navies first appeared on the horizon. I see no reason to believe that homophobia was something that imperialism brought to these nations.


Cheers
Aj

I am anti-death-penalty regardless, but the reason this specifically is concerning is because 79 countries voted to take "sexual orientation" out of a resolution regarding executions. "Sexual orientation" was added to the resolution in 2008, and now it's been taken out.

I believe this is the resolution from two years ago, when sexual orientation was first included.

Here's the bit that used to include sexual orientation

What I have such a problem with concerning religious (any) thought and homosexuality is that they "preach" that "all are Gods children." you find this across all organized world religions in some form or another (although in many of these countries, women are really only viewed as valuable due to their ability to have children- even to the point of ritually removing portions of a woman's body that would give them sexual pleasure- they only need to conceive and carry children, not have carnal pleasure in any form, ever).

This really gets to me in terms of anti-abortion zealots who "preach" about the sanctity of life, yet, believing that certain of "Gods children" do not have a right to life. Christian religions are certainly not the only one’s that do this. Personally, as someone that does have a spiritual life‘s path, this really angers me.

My statements come from more knowledge of former Christianity, yet, it seems that these hypocrisies appear throughout the various world religions. I absolutely detest some of the anti-Muslim sentiments in our society, yet, the sexism that exists with many forms of the Muslim faith is not acceptable to me at all and I don’t buy into cultural relativism as a pass for it. I respect differing cultural variables in terms of understanding people from different places and experiences, but, the days of PC-ing this stuff is over for me.

Then, on the other side of this we see spiritual thought that identifies and embraces homosexuality on a whole different level as in Native American spirituality and many Eastern based spiritual and religious thought. Two-Spirit beliefs fit here.

Now, if there exists an ancient sense of homosexuality that indeed, does link with the sanctity of all life (as is true of Two-Spirit thought) which would be another extension of all being part of a deities blessing (as it were), there is no link with these countries and Western influence (or imperialism) at all- and a huge divide between what is moral in relationship to honoring life.

No, we cannot continue to allow hiding behind cultural relativism as rationale for this way of thinking and it being part of legal documents and contracts of countries we interact with. Nor can we allow this to be accepted as moral in any human sense.

A person doesn't need any religious or spiritual connection in their life to see that this is simply another form of "cleansing" of a group of people from a society. Isn't any different than ethnic or racial cleansing that we have seen with the mass killings of particular people within societies throughout time to clear it of undesirables. same as the genocide of Jews and other groups in Germany and all genocidal events in history- and there have been many! Let us look to the genocide of Native Americans in the United States and when Columbus first arrived in the :“New World.”

I didn't post this because I’m only concerned about executions when it's people 'like us'. I posted it because it is horrific. If the UN General Assembly had passed a resolution saying that Muslims could be summarily executed I would STILL have posted it and I would still be horrified because summary executions are immoral.

I'm not completely against the death penalty there are crimes that are so completely heinous that I think the person who commits them forfeits their lives. However, the crimes I'm thinking of--specifically the use of nuclear weapons by non-state actor or someone reintroducing smallpox into the ecology as a bioweapon--haven't taken place yet. (And before someone says that the United States used nuclear weapons the key phrase is non-state actor. States can keep other states in check. My concern here is nuclear terrorism.) Now, the day someone uses either a nuke or a bioweapon in a terrorist attack, anyone involved in the planning of that act should be tried and when convicted executed. But that's about it for anything less than that, I think the death penalty is needless.

Some of the nations that voted for this are simply beyond anyone's ability to influence. Nothing is going to make North Korea listen to us. However, other nations can be influenced because of tourism--or the lack thereof. Jamaica lives or dies on tourism and a tourism boycott WOULD be felt by them.

Cheers
Aj

Actually, since the United States practices executions for criminals our delegation tends to abstain from votes regarding death penalty. (since typically these votes are in favor of executing people that the USA has no appetite for killing).

What do our actions have to do with this vote? Can you explain to me the causal chain that gets us from "In this year the United States did this action and so in 2010 the UN delegation from this nation voted in favor of executing queers"? I ask because I cannot get there. I do not see the path from, say, our overthrowing the government of Mosadech (sp) in Iran in the mid-50's to them executing queers. Let's say that we had spent the last 234 years safely ensconced in our borders--not intervening even in a case where American intervention was so obviously needed like, say, WW I and WW II. How do you think that the 79 nations that voted in favor of executing queers would have voted? Additionally, why do you think their votes would have been different?

My personal and political views on this are closely tied. It would make a stronger political and moral statement to the rest of the UN nations, if country's like the US would grant full equal human rights rather than issue any type of condemnation.

I agree with dreadgeek, in that I think the cultural beliefs and dogma of those nations are so deeply ingrained that with or without any Western presence in their country those notions of anti- homosexuality would still be intact.

Were we to step up to the plate, so to speak, and show that we not only don't agree with the right to execute based on sexual orientation, but that we further, view homosexuals as equal human beings with FULL rights, perhaps we could change their view without putting them on the defense.

Global politics are no different really than our personal politics. Just more people involved. The whole theory behind thinking globally and acting locally can be felt here.

What right does the US have to see these actions as barbaric ( which is how I see it, not from any statement made in the press), when we disallow the same group of citizens equal rights under and protected by the laws of our own country?

17 Countries abstained. 26 were absent. South Africa? They recently legalized our marriages!?!

Great answers as always.

In many of these countries Women get executed for being raped, etc. But you know that. I know this seems worse because it is so shocking and so right now.

You are right . Countries are full moral agents and it probably is belittling of me to wish that the US were a better example and that we ourselves acted better in the realm of torture and execution and so forth. Like Jess said, if we even had full civil rights for our selves it might help...but maybe not.

The countries who voted to take out the part about sexual orientation are not all yellow and brown, but some of them are allies of the US, maybe that is something to look at? My Argentine childhood with the US in the background pulling strings was decades ago, yes. I should get over it and so should other countries. But does it work like that? History builds on itself and the same things repeat. Maybe none of this has anything to do with these countries wanting to take a stand that the "West" can't tell them what to do (kind of reminds me of states right fight here), but it kind of seems like that...though, several of the countries are in the "West".

I don't know what the answer is. I have a difficult time with people who automatically follow what their religion teaches and I know you do too. Yes, we can boycott countries based on this vote, but what about the countries who did not vote or who abstained? There are no surprises on the list of who voted, but if a few more other countries had stood up for what is right, the vote would not have gone as it did. It is so sad that a vote about a group of human's right to be alive should be so political.

While I am against the death penalty, I can see your point about the difference between people who commit crimes and people who don't. But who gets to pick the what crimes are heinous? We the people of the USA? Is it ok to execute people for political reasons? for being raped? for torture...but not if it is during war time?

I don't know.

Really interesting thread!

Maybe this shows that the UN delegates do not entirely represent the wishes of the citizens amd courts of each country.

Kind of like, our Government.

Actually, it doesn’t seem worse to me. As a matter of fact, one of the things that caused me to have an epiphany regarding the moral danger of cultural relativism was a discussion the 'dash' site a few years ago where feminists--in the name of not being culturally imperialist--excused the stoning of a woman who was raped on the basis that women in America were still not paid equal money for equal work and therefore we had no room to be exercised about the punishment of women who were raped. At that point I realized something had gone seriously, deeply wrong.


Here is why I am skeptical of this idea that IF the United States were a better example then other nations would behave differently: look at the experience of the civil rights movement. The United States, despite what we might think, is not unique in having a sizable ethnic minority population. However, after the Civil Rights movement showed great success in the U.S. did it substantially change the way that, for instance, the fate of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka? Nope, not at all. I'm not sure that we can find an example of a foreign national government deciding to broaden the circle of inclusion in their nation to include an ethnic minority *because* of the civil rights movement.

Firstly, while not all of them are brown or yellow the vast majority of them are. Most of those nations I would not consider part of the West (in this usage, the West isn't a geographical term but a cultural one. If your nation does not draw its roots from Greco-Roman civilization with a line connecting the European Renaissance to the present day your nation isn't a Western one. I'm not saying 'get over it', I'm saying---well, let me put it this way. I am one generation removed from Jim Crow segregation and no more than three generations (because of the generational gulf between my parents and I) from bondage. Does that excuse me from acting right? If I were a racial bigot and homophobic ass would you excuse my behavior as the legacy of slavery? Would you excuse that behavior as I beat you and/or your loved ones to a pulp? I think you wouldn't excuse it. I am saying that no matter WHAT history of colonization or imperial subjection a nation has gone through, it does not let that nation off the moral hook.

I, for one, do not think rights should be up for a vote that's why they are rights. Rights are not negotiable, in my book. Either they exist or they do not exist and if they exist they transcend local culture, political history or democratic voting.

My examples were chosen very deliberately. Is there ANYONE here who would argue that setting off a 10 kiloton tactical nuclear device in the middle of New York City would be a heinous act? Is there ANYONE here would debate that releasing back into the wild the only virus medical science has ever actually defeated would be a heinous act? Keep in mind that smallpox killed fully a third of the people who encountered in Europe where people had *immunity*. Here in the Western Hemisphere where people hadn't evolved defenses against the virus that number jumps into the 80% range.

No. That is not a large scale crime against the species.

No, because that is not a large scale crime against the species.

Cheers
Aj

OK OK, I understand better now what you are saying and agree. Thank you for explaining yet more...I am just on cup of coffee #1 for some reason. :blink:

I get what you are saying about the death penalty and get that my own beliefs about how our judicial system is run get in the way of who does and does not deserve to die. Yes, if I saw and knew 100% solidly that someone spread smallpox all over, or detonated a bomb that took out a major city, it would be difficult to to argue against execution, though I still could not make that decision myself.

And you are right, while I wish the US acted better, I agree that Sri Lanka likely cares less what we do, as long as we don't invade them.

I would say we agree that not getting paid equally in the US or having full Civil Rights in the US does not equate being stoned to death anywhere.

What I do need to work on, is that in my head and in my experience, if someone were beating me to a pulp, I would assume they would be white based on how I was treated when we first moved to TN from South America. But that is another thread.

I do think looking at who did not vote or even show up will be interesting.

As always, much to think about and digest! Thank you!

Not trying to stray too far off topic, but the Sunday edition of The New York Times had an interesting article on honor killings that also pertains to the issue at hand.

http://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/1...illings&st=cse

Many of the countries that are participating in the removal of this language from documents meant to preserve and sustain civil liberties (to a certain extent) also abide by rules set in place by a moral constituency that we as Westerners do not agree with...or at least the "saner" of us don't. Honor killings blanket a plethora of murders that are judicially protected. Even if this language remained, there are ways to manipulate laws sanctioned in moral and hyper-religious hyperbole.

oh poo...I am guessing you need to have a subscription to the NYT in order to access that. And, no...I won't share mine ;)

Here is the article:

DOKAN, Iraq — Serving small glasses of sugary tea, Qadir Abdul-Rahman Ahmed explained how things went bad with the neighbors. It was not true, he said, that his brothers had threatened to drown his niece if she tried to marry the young man down the street.

“We are not against humanity,” he explained. “I told my brother, if she wants to marry, you can’t stop her.”

But the couple should never have married without permission.

“The girl and the boy should be killed,” he said. “It’s about honor. Honor is more important for us than religion.”

Honor killing has a long history in Iraq and here in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan. But even here, this couple’s case stood out because the man was killed, not the woman, and because of the political clout of the warring families.

As some Iraqi lawmakers try to crack down on honor killing, the case — in which there have been no arrests — also illustrates how difficult it can be to uproot a deep-seated tribal honor code.

More than 12,000 women were killed in the name of honor in Kurdistan from 1991 to 2007, according to Aso Kamal of the Doaa Network Against Violence. Government figures are much lower, and show a decline in recent years, and Kurdish law has mandated since 2008 that an honor killing be treated like any other murder. But the practice continues, and the crime is often hidden or disguised to look like suicide.

It was in this climate that Mr. Ahmed’s niece, Sirwa Hama Amin, fell in love with her neighbor, Aram Jamal Rasool, in this village in northern Iraq.

On a recent afternoon in the home of Mr. Rasool’s father, Ms. Amin, 22, showed wedding portraits of herself and Mr. Rasool: a smiling young couple in formal dress, the bride showing none of the strain that marked the pale woman displaying the photographs.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool, 27, grew up across the dusty road from each other, where each family had expanded in a string of houses so close together that their roofs nearly touched. Mr. Rasool’s father, Jamal Rasool Salih, 58, a retired general in the Kurdish military, or pesh merga, helped Ms. Amin’s family move to Dokan from Iran in 1993, and the two families became intertwined.

Like General Salih, Ms. Amin’s brothers and uncles joined the pesh merga and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the town’s dominant political party. One of Ms. Amin’s brothers married the general’s daughter and became his bodyguard; the general’s son Aram was a regular visitor in Ms. Amin’s home.

Still, when the couple fell in love a couple of years ago, they kept their passion secret, knowing their families would not approve. General Salih said he considered Ms. Amin’s relatives unruly soldiers and hellcats, always shooting people. Ms. Amin’s relatives mocked Mr. Rasool because he limped.

The problems started when Ms. Amin’s brother caught her sending a text message to Mr. Rasool on her cellphone. In socially regimented Iraq, cellphones and the Internet have enabled lovers to communicate outside the censorious eyes of their families. But this liberation has come at a price, said Behar Rafeq, director of the Shelter for Threatened Women in Erbil. Of the 24 women in the shelter on a recent day, 15 had encountered threats or violence because of their communications on cellphones or Facebook, Ms. Rafeq said.

Ms. Amin said her male relatives threatened to drown her and took away her phone.

Mr. Ahmed, Ms. Amin’s uncle, denied the threats. If the two wished to marry, he said, the appropriate way was for General Salih, accompanied by a delegation of tribal leaders, to ask for her hand. Instead, he sent surrogates.

“If someone doesn’t come and ask respectfully, how can you agree to that?” he asked.

General Salih said he did not want the marriage, either.

Ms. Amin became a captive in her home. One of Mr. Rasool’s brothers, Rizgar Jamal Rasool, 36, said that when he visited, he found Ms. Amin tearful and beaten, her face swollen.

Ms. Amin and Mr. Rasool became desperate, she said, and plotted ways to kill themselves.

On Sept. 2, 2009, she sneaked out of her parents’ house, walking across the roofs of the adjoining homes and down to a Toyota Land Cruiser. Mr. Rasool was waiting inside, with a grenade he had stolen from his father. “I said, ‘Let’s kill ourselves,’ ” Ms. Amin said. “He said, ‘No, let’s only do it if they find us.’ ”

Instead, the couple went to the police, explaining that they had been threatened because they wanted to marry. Mr. Rasool was held for possession of the grenade; Ms. Amin was sent to a shelter for battered women.

“He was arrested because I wanted him arrested for safety,” General Salih said. “The day they ran away, her uncle, a military captain, called me and said, ‘I’ll burn your house and kill you all if you don’t get the couple back today.’ ”

The couple appealed to the court, and two weeks later, after submitting their paperwork, they were married.

Though Ms. Amin’s family objected to the marriage, she said, they agreed to a truce: if the newlyweds promised to leave Dokan and never return, her relatives agreed not to hunt her down.

For three and a half months the couple lived in Sulaimaniya, an hour from Dokan. Then, on Jan. 2 around 9 p.m., Ms. Amin said, she was in the bathroom when she heard gunshots and her husband shouting her name.

She opened the bathroom door and saw her husband covered in blood and one of her brothers aiming a gun at her. “I saw only my brother, but someone else shot Aram,” she said. Before the smoke cleared, gunmen fired 17 bullets into Mr. Rasool’s chest and 4 into Ms. Amin’s leg and hip, General Salih said.

According to Mr. Ahmed, the brother who did the shooting was Hussein Hama Amin, a soldier in the pesh merga. Mr. Amin denied killing his brother-in-law but said he paid $10,000 to another brother, and to one of Mr. Rasool’s brothers, to kill the couple.

“Why should she live after she has been that irresponsible about the honor of her family?” Mr. Amin said.

Ms. Amin was two months pregnant at the time.

The authorities in Kurdistan have made great strides against honor killing, said Kurdo Omer Abdulla, director of the General Directorate to Trace Violence Against Women, a government agency. “Every year we see a decrease in the statistics of violence against women,” she said.

For the two families, the killing did not resolve the conflict.

The police arrested no one. Instead, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, tribal leaders and clerics brought the families together in a formal council session in front of more than 4,000 local residents.

General Salih said he was pressed by the party to forgive his son’s killers and promise not to kill them.

Ms. Amin’s family was required to promise not to kill her. The two families provide conflicting accounts on whether money was also exchanged.

Her relatives said they have disowned her but would not harm her. “May God kill her,” Hussein Hama Amin said. “We will not kill her.”

In General Salih’s living room, Ms. Amin dandled her 4-month-old son, named Aram after her husband. By Kurdish custom she is now disgraced and unsuitable for marriage.

She lives a few hundred feet from the family that cast her out, in a house filled with weapons, afraid that her relatives will try to kill her. When she leaves the house, she is escorted by armed in-laws.

General Salih remains bitter at his neighbors, the party and the tribal leaders, who have refused to make any arrests.

“I’m a powerful person,” he said. “I could kill them. But I don’t.”

“They should get arrested,” he said. “Instead they get salaries. There is no law.”

I have been reading more. The US did not vote in the final removal of the sexual orientation verbiage, just in the initial vote. Great.

It seems like honor is more important than human life in many places. How does one argue with that?

Sigh.