‘My 15-Year-Old Relative Was Killed for Refusing to Marry Her Cousin. My Family Celebrated by Dancing in the Street’

The men of my tribe [extended family] threw my relative Kawthar Bashar al-Husayjawi, 15, into a pit and put a little dirt over her body. They had killed her hours earlier with 10 bullets, and split her small head with an axe. My family then joined others in coming on to the streets to dance and celebrate her death.

Kawthar lived in al-Nahrawan, a district in the south-east of Baghdad. She had been taken out of school and at age 13 forced to marry an alcoholic years older than her.

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In early May, as the day of the wedding and what she believed would be a new phase of rape and violence grew closer, Kawthar left the family home. She had been denied the chance to go to school or learn how to earn money, so she left with nothing except her clothes and a head covering.

After fleeing, she was spotted by a neighbour who abducted her for three days and, she says, subjected her to terrible things that she did not disclose. Although she assured her family that she had not absconded with him willingly – and even after surveillance cameras appeared to support her account of being dragged by force – her family refused to believe her.

Kawthar’s father, uncle and fiance interrogated her about what had happened during those three days before taking her to an open area on the outskirts of Baghdad. I have tried to imagine what she was feeling in that car with three men from the family that was supposed to be her circle of safety. Did they tell her her fate? What were her last pleas? Was she screaming, hoping their consciences would wake up? Or did she wonder how her father could do this to his daughter?

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Although Iraqi law does not directly mention the phrase “honour” killing, there are mitigating excuses in law that address the crime of killing motivated by honour. Someone killing his wife or close female relative after finding in an act of adultery shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not exceeding three years. In many cases, the crime is not viewed as a deliberate, fully constituted murder, but rather as a family incident that got out of control.

Iraq’s new laws permitting children as young as nine years old to marry is terrifying to me, because a child pulled out of school and pushed into early marriage becomes more vulnerable and less able to protect herself or object to the violence she is subjected to. Kawthar had not yet reached an age that allowed her to understand life, yet everyone was treating her as a woman who must be subdued, monitored and punished.