Two Pakistani sisters residing in Spain were murdered by their relatives in eastern Pakistan in an apparent honor killing, following the young women requested a divorce from their cousins, with whom they had been married, and refused to allow them to accompany them back to Europe.
The sisters aged 20 and 24 were originally from Gujratin the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab, where on Friday night “They were strangled and fatally shot in their sleep”A local police spokesman, Nauman Hassan, told EFE on Monday, noting that six suspects have been arrested.
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“Today the police obtained five days of pre-trial detention for six of the alleged murderers. The defendants were arrested yesterday, during the 24 hours following the event. According to the initial investigation, the sisters were honor killed.”Hassan explained.
The spokesman assured that the young women, following falling into a “trap”, had returned to Pakistan on Thursdayand their relatives they tried to get the sisters to intercede for their cousins before the Spanish authorities, with whom they had been married “more than a year ago”, so that they might “emigrate to Spain”.
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“The sisters (…) wanted a divorce following the arranged marriage and both wanted to marry others”, concluded Hassan, who noted that there are still three suspects without arrest, and the father of the young women “is still in Spain”. The mother refused to file a complaint, something common in honor killings.
RESIDENCE IN SPAIN
Although at first it was believed that the two young women had Spanish nationality, sources from the Embassy of spain in Islamabad they specified to Efe that the sisters are Pakistanis with a residence permit in Spain, where they were domiciled in Catalonia.
As they are not Spanish citizens, the embassy’s consular assistance service cannot be activated, they warned. In addition, these are Pakistanis who are in their own country, so they are the authorities of Pakistan those dealing with the event.
These types of cases, however, are not isolated, and as diplomatic sources explained, in recent years the Spanish embassy has responded to several requests for help from Spanish citizens of Pakistani origin whom they had kidnapped.
Sometimes, they noted, they even carried out rescue operations, in which the woman was first informed that a car would be waiting for her at a certain time of night to take her directly to the embassy, where she would then receive consular protection.
Those known as honor killings are common in South Asia and often involve male members of a family who commit what they consider to be an affront that contravenes the conservative family morals of local societies.
According to data from the NGO Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 478 honor crimes were recorded in the country last year alone. Between 2004 and May 2018, that figure rose to 17,628 cases, although it is believed that the real number might be much higher due to the lack of complaints, especially when it comes to relatives.
The Pakistani government approved in 2016 a law that prohibits the pardon of the relatives of the victims in this type of crime, a legal hole with which many men were free following killing a woman, generally a sister or a wife.
However, human rights groups and activists warn that the law has had little impact in curbing these crimes.