Just International

How do honour killings differ from crimes of passion?

Her name was Melissa. She was 22. Her murderer’s name was Torbjörn, a Stockholmer with a criminal record and contacts in Hells Angels circles. He was 37, had been her “boyfriend” for two years and was sentenced to life. His friend, who may have participated in planning the murder, was sentenced to two years for desecrating a grave.

Two months later, Fadime was shot by her father, who was visiting her in Uppsala. The murder of Fadime, like that of Melissa became a long-running saga in the mass media; but the focus of articles and agitated emotions was dramatically different.

In the case of Melissa, the murder is treated as a piece of classical criminal journalism. Looking back, several of the articles read like titillating entertainment. Melissa’s beauty is stressed by illustrating the articles with photographs taken from her modelling portfolio. Several of the articles maintain that she used to wear black leather trousers and flirted with death-metal music and Satanism. The description of her stresses her sexuality, while her murderer is portrayed, of course, as an object of hatred – he weighs 140 kilos and has tattoos all over his body.

By contrast, the description of Fadime is severe, almost chaste. The murder is presented as an ideological or religious act, and does not follow the traditional pattern of crime journalism.

Nevertheless, there are obvious parallels. In both cases, a beautiful, outgoing young woman with a zest for life is dependent on an older man – Fadime on her father and Melissa on her boyfriend. Both cases involved older men with a need to control younger women who were in the process of breaking free. In both cases, the women had been subjected to increasing unease linked with death threats. In both cases, their rebellion was punished by death.

There are also differences between the cases. According to the mass media and concurring with the court judgment, the murder of Melissa was a cruel and premeditated killing linked with torture, but also an obviously “insane act” based on jealousy. The boyfriend simply could not tolerate Melissa going her own way and planning her own future outside his influence. But the murder of Fadime was a “culturally determined honour killing.” Her father simply could not tolerate Fadime going her own way.

“Melissa murders” are not unusual in Sweden. There are 15 to 20 every year in which the main circumstances are similar: threats, dependence, ill treatment and violence. Every year, Swedish women flee for their lives and seek protection wherever they can find it – in remote villages, with friends or in one of the refuges for women, of which there are more than 200.

Every year, Swedish society produces a new generation of threatened women who can testify to the lack of legal rights and the lukewarm interest shown by the police and other authorities.

Evidence of this lack of legal rights is interesting. In the debate about honour killings, it is claimed specifically that legislation in Muslim countries (as distinct from culturally advanced Sweden) favours and legitimizes violence on the part of men.

This systematic violence directed at women – for systematic violence is exactly what it is, and what it would be called if it affected to a similar extent trade unionists, or Jews, or the disabled – is never regarded as a “cultural problem” in Sweden. Indeed, one could ask if it is regarded as a problem at all, apart from in a strictly legal context.

But there is practically nothing available written by a Swedish social polemicist in which the writer tries to explain the murder of Melissa from a Swedish cultural-anthropological or broader cultural perspective. Such argumentation is reserved exclusively for “immigrants,” “Kurds” or “Muslims,” who can be studied in relation to Swedish culture.

It is, of course, impossible to compare the violent treatment of women and suggest that one murder is more cruel than another. In that respect, Fadime and Melissa were sisters.

An objection frequently made by supporters of a “cultural-anthropological” approach – and the argument is legitimate, to a certain extent – is that a fundamental difference between the murders of Melissa and Fadime is that few Swedish murders are encouraged by relations, close family and close friends. But this thesis is not completely true, either. Surprisingly often – as was the case with Melissa – violence is encouraged by individuals in the killer’s close circle of friends. It is difficult to find any other explanation for the willingness of friends of Swedish women-murderers to assist in tidying up the scene of the crime.

There are plenty of examples. A case that attracted a lot of attention a few years ago was the woman who committed suicide at the home of a notorious middle-aged swindler, known as the Count. When the girlfriend died on his sofa after repeated quarrels, the Count did not telephone the police, but contacted three male friends, who quickly appeared with hacksaws. Then, in accordance with good old Swedish traditions, the men drove around, dumping her remains bit by bit. This case has not been subjected to cultural-anthropological scrutiny, either.

By Stieg Larsson

30 March 2012

@ Globe and Mail

From The Expo Files: Articles By Crusading Journalist Stieg Larsson.© Reprinted with permission of Penguin Group (Canada).

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