By Supna Zaidi
Rody Alvarado Peña may finally become a legal resident of the US after being in limbo for the past 14 years in immigration court. Under current US asylum law, gender is not a class of people that are recognized under the law who warrant asylum, unlike persecution based on ethnicity, religious affiliation, or sexual orientation. Historically, allowing gender based asylum has been considered too broad, giving rise to fears of the "floodgates" opening and thousands of women entering the US as a result.
Thus, the Obama administration recommendation that asylum for the Guatemalan woman be granted raises many questions about women's basic rights around the world, and what statements the US is willing to make critical of foreign treatment of them.
Rody endured a decade of violence by her husband, Francisco Osorio, a former soldier in Guatemala. Since her arrival in the US in 1995, no immigration judge has questioned the credibility of her story. According to court documents, "she married when she was 16, and became pregnant soon afterward. In a beating that he apparently hoped would induce an abortion, Mr. Osorio dislocated her jaw and kicked her repeatedly. He also "pistol-whipped Ms. Alvarado, broke windows and mirrors with her head, punched and slapped her, threatened her with his machete and dragged her down the street by her hair."
It is likely that the administration is assuming that the case by case analysis courts impose on asylum hopefuls will limit gender as a asylee class to conflict areas like Guatemala and other parts of Latin America, where machismo, and civil unrest have made women collateral damage.
What of other women around the world? As Guatemalan conditions have given rise to a new term for murder, "femicide," so have centuries of attacks, and murders against women in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, namely, "honor killings."
Victims of honor killings are predominantly women. They have been killed because, under the eyes of family authority figures, the woman has behaved in some manner that has shamed the family. In order for honor to be restored, the woman must be killed. Thus, victims of honor killings are distinguishable from Guatamalan women like Rody, because they do not necessarily have a history of abuse. But, ironically, they are more likely to become victims of murder for any "future acts" that they know or should know their family might disapprove of.
Some reasons for honor killings include: premarital sex, being associated with a person of the opposite sex (a conversation, dating, etc), being a victim of rape, choosing a marital partner that the family disapproves of, and dressing or behaving in a manner that is deemed too western or too independent.
It must be very difficult for the average westerner to understand what kind of psychological inferiority such fear cultivates. A woman's actions are not her own, her ambitions and desires are not her own, and if she is brave enough to try to do something different that her family disapproves of, she knows what she is ultimately risking - her life.
In 2001 King Abdallah presented a bill outlining stiff penalties for honor killings, but parliament rejected it, stating, "it [punishing honor killings] would encourage adultery and create new social problems." Four years later, honor killings accounted for one-third of all violent deaths in Jordan in 2005, where perpetrators received as little as six months in prison under the penal code.
Secular Iraq offers no punishment. Consider the following anecdotal evidence. This year, a 17-year-old named Rand Abdel-Qader was killed by her father because she had a crush on a British soldier. The arresting Iraqi sergeant stated that "not much can be done when we have an 'honor killing' case. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws." The father also killed his wife, who left him after the murder of their daughter. He will not be prosecuted for either murder in Iraq.
Thus, as a persecuted class, Muslim women surely qualify. Yet, as the Rifqa Bary case in Florida has shown, what do we know of a family or father, until he has actually attempted to commit the crime? Potential victims of honor killings do not necessarily have any history of victimhood, solely the fear of future harm.
Yet, even by limiting the abuse of women to recognizing battered and sexually abused women will put US immigration and our understanding of universal human rights at direct odds with honor driven societies that justify the second class status of women under Islamic law and local cultural norms.
What is sexual abuse or battery against a woman in a Muslim majority nation? In most of these nations, marital rape is not recognized. Marriage of minor girls is common, especially in rural and tribal areas. Governments look the other way, and clerics justify both under religious law. Most recently, Afghanistan, with the US present, passed a law stating that Shiite Muslim women must sleep with their husbands a certain amount of times every week. These are not societies that recognize the autonomy of women.
Recognizing gender as a persecuted class is correct under universal human rights standards. The unfortunate prevalence of such persecution forces government's like ours, to limit who we recognize victims of it.
Yet, the Guatemalan case of Rody sends a strong message to the Guatemalan government to stop looking the other way. In 2008 , they did pass a law making femicide a hate crime (under US legal lingo) raising the sentence against perpetrators.
Slowly expanding gender based persecution to eventually include honor killings is a necessary follow-up. Telling governments like Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan, that they cannot willfully ignore the status of their women is critical to improving not just the living conditions of these women, but the socio-economic standing of their nations.
Lastly, with continued immigration between Muslim majority nations and western nations, we have no choice but to address honor killings. There have been at least six honor killings in the US alone in the last six years.
(Supna Zaidi is assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project at the Middle East Forum and editor of Muslim World Today.)
