Stoned

The writers for American soap operas such as “As the World Turns” would have to really, really dig deep to come up with a script built on unrequited love to beat the primitive, tribal family in Pakistan that recently stoned their pregnant daughter to death. She wanted to marry the man she was in love with, not the man Papa arranged, and Papa and the boys - her brothers - took offense at her insolence. So they stoned her to death. And they did it in front of the Lahore, courthouse!

According to a news report from CBS/AP:

“May 27, 2014. (Yes, 2014!) LAHORE, Pakistan- A woman was stoned to death by her own family in front of a Pakistani high court on Tuesday for marrying the man she loved, police and a defense lawyer said.

Nearly 20 members of the woman's family, including her father and brothers, attacked her and her husband with batons and bricks in broad daylight before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore, said police official Naseem Butt. He said Farzana Parveen, 25, had married Mohammad Iqbal, with whom she had been engaged for years in opposition to her family.”

The article continues:

"...Parveen's relatives waited outside the court, which is located on a main downtown thoroughfare. As the couple walked up to the court's main gate, the family members fired shots in the air and tried to snatch her from Iqbal, he said.

When she resisted, her father, brothers and other relatives started beating her, eventually pelting her with bricks from a nearby construction site, Iqbal said.

Iqbal, 45, said he started seeing Parveen after the death of his first wife, with whom he had five children.

"We were in love," he told The Associated Press. He alleged that the woman's family wanted to fleece money from him before marrying her off.

"I simply took her to court and registered a marriage," infuriating the family, he said.

Butt, the police official, said Parveen's father surrendered after the incident and called the murder an "honor killing."

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a private organization, said in a report last month that some 869 women were murdered in so-called honor killings in 2013.”

Wow, top that scenario, you writers at As the World Turns, or the writers at General Hospital, or any of the remaining soap operas on American television where true love and marital infidelity are the core reason millions of American women, and a few men as well, watch television every day. I bet American, or Spanish and Latin American soaps for that matter, aren't broadcast on Arabian or Farsi TV systems. Erika Kane, and three or four thousand other characters, would never have made it out of Pine Valley alive.

The entire world mobilized in protest to save 230 young Nigerian women kidnapped by Boco Haram Islamic radicals in Borno State on April 15, 2014. Where is the anger over 869 women killed by husbands and fathers in Pakistan in 2013 alone because of religious grounds? Professional courtesy among religions? You don't comment on our brutality and sexual aberrations and we won't comment on yours?

In any other civilized country, murder charges would normally be filed against the killers. But we are talking about a civilization mired in its religion of almost two thousand years ago. It was cruel then, it is cruel now. If there were a god, he would cry at the loss of his daughter and grandchild.

The airline terminal at LaHore is actually a time warp civilized people pass through to get to that primitive, medieval partition of planet Earth where you could easily get killed if you believe in the wrong god, while the ones who kill their own daughters are considered honorable men.

Can I make it worse? Yes, I can! Remember, the Pakistanis have nuclear weapons.

[Update: May 31st, 2014.  Bowing to International Pressure, the murderers have been arrested, and the police who stood by and watched as they killed her are under investigation.  The updated story at:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/31/world/asia/pakistan-honor-murder/index.html]