Honour-based violence is increasing, an expert has warned, and 3,000 victims in Australia have come forward in less than a year.
Dr Carol Kaplanian said it was important to distinguish honour-based violence from family and domestic violence because it was premeditated and specifically aimed to save a family’s honour and avoid shame.
Speaking out after the sentencing last month of a Afghan Muslim father who stabbed his daughter for dating a Christian in Adelaide, she said the phenomenon started out in Africa before spreading to the Middle East and South-East Asia.
“If we go and detect or diagnose those murders and look at the refugee or migrant women that are murdered in Australia in domestic violence I can assure you a high percentage of these murders have occurred in the name of honour,” Dr Kaplanian told ABC News.
Nina Aouilk, the UK-based co-founder of an organisation called End Honour Killings and a victim of honour-based violence herself, said she was receiving constant reports from Australia.
“Since December last year, I’ve had over 3,000 people – mainly girls – reach out to me from Australia alone, telling me that they’re victims of honour-based abuse and discrimination,” she said.
Dr Kaplanian said globalisation and mass immigration was making the problem worse.
“In the last two years, from reports and research that is primarily emerging from the UK, it’s actually showing that honour-based violence is significantly on the rise,” she said.
“Families are fearful that their daughters may become westernised – or may not adhere to what’s expected in their cultures.”
On July 29 the Muslim father, who came to Australia from Afghanistan as a refugee, was jailed for 14 years and three months with a non-parole period of nine years for stabbing his daughter in an Adelaide carpark in November 2021.
The man, who cannot be named, tracked the victim to Sefton Plaza with family members – including the victim’s mother, sister and brother-in-law – who restrained her while he stabbed her repeatedly in the abdomen.
They then drove her to the family home where she was put in the shower bleeding profusely, and she only survived because eyewitnesses called emergency services who arrived in time to save her.
The father was caught on police bodycam saying in his native Pashtu “why did she do this?” and “she deserves this”. He was also heard calling his daughter a “prostitute”.
He pleaded guilty to an aggravated charge of causing serious harm, while the other members of the family pleaded guilty to a non-aggravated charge of causing harm with intent, and unlawful imprisonment.
Murder charges were dropped by prosecutors as part of a plea deal last year.
The victim was previously arranged to marry her cousin in northern Pakistan at age 17 but had refused, and after beginning a relationship with a Christian man she met at university was warned by family members “you need to break up, if your father finds out you’ll die”.
She suffered a lacerated liver, perforated kidney, and internal bleeding as a result of the stabbing.
Her mother was jailed for five years and five months, with a non-parole period of three years and two months.
The eldest brother was sentenced to nine years and five months with a non-parole period of six years, and the sister and brother-in-law were given suspended sentences along with a younger brother who helped track down his sister.
