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My 15-year-old relative was killed for refusing to marry her cousin

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/01/kawthar-al-husayjawi-killed-refusing-forced-marriage-marry-family-celebrated-iraq
49•Anon84•1h ago

Comments

Bender•49m ago
Absolutely awful, but part of their culture and legal system. Question for the historians: what precedents are set regarding changing a culture? What worked and what did not?
kazinator•42m ago
Well, we know one thing from this story: the Gulf War didn't fucking work.

But, oh, bombs, drones and air strikes will yield much better long-term results in Iran.

_--__--__•30m ago
> After the ban, Balochi priests in the Sindh region complained to the British Governor, Charles Napier about what they claimed was a meddlement in a sacred custom of their nation. Napier replied:

>>Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs!

>Thereafter, the account goes, no suttee took place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)#Opposition_to_...

lo_zamoyski•18m ago
I.e., imperialism.

Imperialism gets a bad rap—and it can be bad—but it wasn't black and white as the rash and motivated slogans in the street would have you believe. Empires can have a beneficial and civilizing effect on peoples who are unable or unwilling to address certain issues themselves. The British Empire was a huge force in halting the slave trade. The Spanish—allied with surrounding tribes—put an end to the murderous and psychotic Aztec elite; the Mayans experienced a similar fate. Sati in the Indian subcontinent is another example. Rome's civilizing influence on Europe's barbarians is also well-known.

lo_zamoyski•29m ago
The conversion of hearts, ultimately. A culture is sustained by people. Missionaries are powerful in this regard, but they must be prepared for martyrdom as they will be contradicting established evil practices.

Film and media are very powerful for shaping attitudes. Of course, can you expect them to be made or viewed or released in a country with a problem like that?

Severe laws and a regime willing to enforce them. The law is a teacher. Murder by itself deserves death—this falls out of the definition of justice in a straightforward manner—so at the very least, such a regime would have the murderers executed. Accessories would be punished in due proportion of their complicity. But how to have such a regime in such a country? Democratic processes only amplify existing pathologies.

Gibbon1•23m ago
Probably pushing the idea that doing stuff like that is something criminal trash class families do.

Helps when religious leaders are against it. The Catholic church was against forced marriage which is why that mostly died out in Europe during the middle ages.

regularization•45m ago
Isn't this the country the US and UK invaded in 2003 because of non-existent WMDs (shades of Iran today) and overthrew the nationalist, secular leader, so that it has now fallen more into the hands of Islamists?

Incidentally Iraq's parliament told the US military to leave in 2020 and the US has refused. So this is going on under the continued US military occupation of this country.

kstrauser•40m ago
> and overthrew the nationalist, secular leader

Two things can be true at once:

1. The US invaded on false pretenses. We should never have been there.

2. Saddam Hussein and his family were brutal dictators who shouldn't be mourned. We didn't exactly topple the leadership of, say, Sweden.

Hussein was a secular leader in much the same way as Stalin was. Their horrific abuses weren't driven by religion, but that's little comfort to the lives they destroyed.

free652•17m ago
>secular leader

Eh what? Hahahaha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_Campaign

rootedbox•44m ago
Before we look all high and mighty on this.. Just a reminder "gay panic defense." is still used in court today in the USA to justify killing of gays.

The most famous case was when Lucien Carr killed David Kammerer. The just called it an honor slaying.

No person should ever be killed, and it should never be justified because its the social norm.

kazinator•37m ago
Doesn't work that way in Canada. In 2010, a 37-year-old male got 6 years for sucker-punching a 62-year-old male who made advances toward him in bar in the Vancouver west end (lotsa gays there). The 62-year-old fell, hit his head, and died as a result.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gay-basher-g...

6 years is not a lot, but it's the same length of sentence handed around the same time to a random murderer who killed a welder from Thailand.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/killer-of-thai-welde...

From these we know two things: a human life is not worth a fuck in Canada, but at least gay and non-gay is about the same.

brailsafe•18m ago
Best way to shorten a murder sentence seems to be to just do it with your car. It's crazy what people seem to get away even if they're clearly deranged, drunk, and blowing through red lights etc..
1-more•31m ago
You are allowed to try to use the defense in some places, but there's no guarantee that it will work. It is banned in DC and 30 states: California, Illinois, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Georgia, Wisconsin, Washington, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Oregon, Vermont, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Arkansas, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Delaware, Michigan. Put another way, it's banned for about 76% of the US population. Does it actually work a lot when it is used? Did it ever? Note that the case you're referencing is from 1944, for instance.
windowshopping•44m ago
What can we do to help them?
kyleee•39m ago
This could have been prevented if the UK let her in
fennecbutt•14m ago
Yeah let's just fire all of borderforce. UK is morally and ethically responsible for thr plight of all of the citizens of the Middle East after all. Hell why not make it the entire world.
kitd•13m ago
Huh?
rendx•27m ago
"More than 30 [US] states nationwide have no ban on child marriage. And it is not an anomaly. According to the non-profit Unchained At Last, since the year 2000, the United States has documented 315,000 cases of child marriage within its own borders—largely sanctioned by the Church and courts. No federal law bans child marriage in America. Not one."

"CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 18, 1979. Afghanistan has ratified this treaty. The United States has not."

"Today, the spectacle of America condemning child marriage abroad while refusing to adopt the international treaty that prohibits it is a moral and legal incoherence that undermines every word we say."

https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/the-taliban-legalizes-child-ma...

mminer237•14m ago
Not that either is great, but there is a world of difference between saying "a 16-year-old can marry another 16-year-old if the couple and both sets of parents agree" (an often a judge too) and saying "a 12-year-old can marry a 30-year-old against her will".
lacoolj•27m ago
Absolute trajedy.

Can someone explain why this is on HN tho

jimjimjim•13m ago
This is going to burn through karma faster than a blowtorch but it seems to me that just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it should be respected. The world changes, traditions should change to. And before anybody says "what right do I have to tell other people how to live", why not? why shouldn't I tell other people how to live? I'm sure those people would tell me how to live so I feel totally ok with thinking some people's traditions are reprehensible and I feel like those traditions should change.
lowpro•5m ago
I drove through Iraq for a month in 2022. From Baghdad north to Erbil, then south to Fallujah and Najaf.

Men and women rarely interact, like many Muslim majority countries. It is odd for most people to talk to the other gender who is not their direct family. Found the stereotypes we have in the west of women were the same there but more exaggerated. A tough existence.

kazinator•27m ago
1944 is the year they hanged George Stinney in South Carolina, a 14 year old black boy falsely convicted of murder, using about zero evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stinney

fennecbutt•17m ago
I think the point is that THE DEFENSE STILL EXISTS IN SOME CAPACITY.

As a gay guy I've had str8 ppl tell me "you can still go to Egypt just you know, don't be gay". It's infuriating, depressing, and so much more.

Honestly, sometimes I kind of understand the tiniest bit of the queer peeps that were getting extra spicy like last year. Society is an amorphous blob of averages and if you don't fit into the average...well.

Redoubts•22m ago
> Just a reminder "gay panic defense." is still used in court today in the USA

Can you cite a case in the last 5 years?

Can you cite a case in the last 20 years where the jury didn’t roll their eyes?

fennecbutt•16m ago
So why not outlaw it then? Should be easy if it's doesn't get used then there's no reason to have it hanging around right?
rationalist•11m ago
Let's outlaw people using deathrays shot from spaceships too /s

Do we need to make a law for every hypothetical thing?

Hnrobert42•15m ago
Yeah, but what about ...