Man set on fire in London
‘Honour’-based violence nearly claims another victim:
“Police were appealing for witnesses today following the attempted murder of a man who was doused in petrol and set on fire in east London. The 20-year-old, who is fighting for his life in hospital, was torched as he sat in his car in Forest Gate. It is believed the Hindi victim, who suffered 65 per cent burns in the attack, was targeted because he was dating a Muslim girlfriend. He had just parked his car, a green Honda Prelude, in St George’s Road when he was approached by the suspect or suspects and had petrol poured over him before being set alight…
Two men aged 20 and 21 have been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and released on bail.Today’s appeal comes as a 15-year-old girl and a man in his 20s are both still critically ill after being set alight in two separate attacks in the Greater London area last weekend.”
Update: Police have charged 24 year old Nadim Kurrimbukus from Hounslow with attempted murder.
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Filed in: Cultural Relativism
Import the third world and become the third world.
“It is believed the HINDI victim, who suffered 65 per cent burns in the attack, was targeted because he was dating a Muslim girlfriend.”
Er…did they mean HINDU victim??
Don(2):
We already have a Don here. Hence the change to avoid confusion.
Desi:
Well spotted. It was in the London Paper, so what do you expect?
An absolutely nauseating crime.
“Import the third world and become the third world.”
Don’t be so silly, Don.
Respectfully,
Ben
I’m sure Don number 2 (pardon the expression) is well aware of the levels of violence against men and women in world number 1 (pardon the expression) as well as the whole world (planet number 3 from the sun).
“It was in the London Paper, so what do you expect?”
Dunno, I don’t know anything about the London Paper, but the way you speak about it makes it sound like it’s similar to the National Review we have in the US…
@6 Desi
Nah from its main webpage it appears to be a celebrity/entertainment paper, did not see anything specifically right wing about it.
Rumbold,
The Don is known as an all round good bloke.
Between you and me Don(2) ought to be told to fuck off. That is an attempt at identity theft, and shouldn’t be allowed.
Just my opinion.
It is playing with the real Don’s trademark. Y’know, honest commentary…
Yeah, fuck off, Don.
@8 flipside…
Perhaps you should read the articles you post about, instead of engaging in your typical BS. Your article shows that poles (1), irish (3), jamacians (2), etc. have the highest offense rate. Asians rank somewhere near the lowest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1563890/Foreigners-‘commit-fifth-of-crime-in-London’.html
Flipside,
You’re an clear example of why sensible debates about tackling religious extremism can be difficult.
Ben
I love these people. Couple of points.
Nothing indicates that these people were foreign.
Why are we letting a loon railroad this debate? The issue is honour killings not immigration. If the loon wants to talk about immigration let him post it on an article about immigration.
Oh shit, I hate this. Can we confirm that the Don is the Don and that any frachises are just unallowable?
If you get douglas clark arguing that, say, Hitler was right, you’d at least understand the problem? My identity would have been stolen. And so with Don.
It is difficult with new commentators, who are just starting on this site, and who pick a name that somebody else is using, proabably unknowingly. It is bound to happen.
Rumbold,
Yup, I understand the problem. Sorry if my comment seemed a bit intemperate. Anyway this is derailing your thread.
I think I am right in saying that the penalty for racist motivated assault is higher than for ‘ordinary’ assault. I wonder whether ‘honour related’ assault should also carry a stiffer sentence? Maybe it already does.
Douglas:
You are never intemperate (well, almost never).
Higher penalties for such crimes always sounds like a good idea in theory, but is it fair? If you kill someone because they are Asian, is that worse then killing someone because you don’t like their hat? The end result is the same.
No, I don’t think it is fair. It is civil society making a point. Motivation does seem to come into sentencing policy though, doesn’t it?
No, it doesn’t, and it’s taken a sea-change to stop the judiciary giving reduced sentences in the name of ‘cultural differences’ – the reduction of sentence in the case of Heshu Yunes for example.
Well — the proximate result is the same. But if I read that someone killed someone because they didn’t like their hat, I’d consider that person to be sole lunatic — it wouldn’t stop me from wearing a hat, or putting sunhats on my children. However if I read that someone killed someone for being Asian, I start thinking about violent organised racism and I would start to worry about my friends, maybe warning them to take care, to look out for trouble. This is the secondary result, a check on the psychological and physical freedoms of a community, and this is probably intentional on the part of the murderer. The murder is the crime against the individual, whether hat-wearing or Asian, and the second crime is against the community. Since there is no hat-wearing community in particular, and since there isn’t a widespread discrimination against hats there’s no secondary result.
It’s not that I am in favour of hate crimes legislation (I haven’t thought that deeply about it) but the logic of what I’m saying above does apply to HBV (honour based violence) — it’s also an example of violence used as intentional check upon the psychological and physical freedoms of girls, women and men.
#9 was post-pub, so a little harsher than usual. But on reflection, not unreasonably so. Given the nature of the comment I don’t see any cause to give him the benefit of the doubt.
The problem with sentencing based on intent is that you then run into precisely the sort of relativism that you want to avoid. Premeditated murder should carry the same penalty, whatever the reason for it. If this isn’t the case, then people will start to lobby for reduced sentences for certain murders, including a powerful lobby who will plead the cause of reduced sentences for HBV, for cultural reasons.
“Import the third world and become the third world.”
Don’t be so silly, Don.
Is it just me, or does that fail to address the point? Are you suggesting bestial violence in defence of “honour” is common among Anglicans or Catholics, so third world immigrants have made no difference to the combustion stats? And how about gang rape? Electoral fraud? Suicide bombing? Consanguineous marriage? All flourishing here before third world immigration began?
No-ones stabbed anyone in a pub for looking at their girlfriend the wrong way before Asians arrived ?
It all depends on how strictly you define honour isn’t it.
I’m pretty sure the farmers daughter jokes didn’t arrive with the coloured in the 50s.
Rumbold says:
I don’t think so. I don’t think there is anyone left with power who’d want to be known as pro-HBV. Also, Europe advises member states “not to accept any reference to cultural practice as an extenuating circumstance in cases of men’s violence against women such as in crimes of honour and genital mutilation.”
Even so, my argument isn’t based on the intent of the murderer but the result of the murder: the intimidation of a community. I can see your point about intent very clearly: I hate the fact that all of us have no choice but to keep on using the term ‘honour’, because even with the scare quotes, we are using the vocabulary of the murderers, a vocabulary which is designed to excuse these murders in the name of his ‘honourable’ motivation.
Galloise Blonde,
This a respectful question. Do you think you’ve won that war yet?
I can see clearly the point you are making, that the outcome of an ‘honour’ killing is to effect everyone else in that community. It is clearly a measure of what that group might do. And thus has a carry over beyond the actual crime committed. This, I’d put to you, is unacceptable and requires a response.
Which was why I suggested it should be treated as bad as racially motivated violence. I accept that that is not ‘fair’, but it seems to me at least to be ’sending a message’ in an opposite direction. Which, given Rumbolds’ post up above, seems to be something we should be addressing.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Sour grapes.
We r taykin they wimminz.
Galloise Blonde:
Perhaps not in parliament, but there will always be those ‘community leaders’ who will push for a lesser punishment, because they believe that it enhances their standing, while firming up the base. You yourself have documented plenty of cases where judges in supposedly developed countries have given murderers reduced sentences for cultural reasons.
Hi douglas.
I’m not normally known for my sunny optimism; I do hope that HBV is now unacceptable and murder is murder, and that there wouldn’t be many people who would step up to defend Ari Mahmod’s right to hire men to rape and kill his niece. Not publicly anyway.
But on the question of HBV as aggravating factor, I’m honestly not sure. I can see the logic that if racism is an aggravating factor, then ‘honour’ is as well, because it has may have the same kind of collective affect: IKWRO have had cases of women directly threatened by family members using the names of Banaz and Heshu. However, Shahien Taj (Henna Foundation, South Wales) tells me that if anything, South Asian women on the whole are less aware of HBV than the majority. She says she holds awareness raising sessions where she shows photos of some of the most famous victims, and asks if they know who they are, and that white people are often familiar with one or two cases while the South Asian women often don’t know any. Could be of course that the white women are social workers, council employees, police and DV workers who would naturally read the papers more. Also, surveys in Jordan show that men are much more aware of HK than women, which possibly just shows that women are more occupied in the domestic sphere and don’t get involved in the broader world. So now I’m genuinely confused as to whether HBV actually has the same knock-on effects as racial violence.
So while I like the idea of an aggravating factor in theory, or as a gesture, I’m not sure of what logic could justify it. Also, as the term HBV becomes widely used it becomes more and more misapplied and misunderstood: for me, it must be collectively decided and planned to qualify. But since the government has not decided to create HBV as a distinct category to DV, making ‘honour’ an aggravating offence could potentially lead to DV within communities with a reputation for HBV being prosecuted more severely for the same crime.
Sorry for the cross-post Rumbold, replying to your 26 here.
The last case I can recall where a lesser sentence was asked for by community members was the case of Mohammed Arshad (2006). Arshad a board member of Dundee mosque and a Justice of the Peace (!) who hired a hitman to kill his daughter who had married by choice. An Islamic group asked for Arshad to get a non-custodial sentence as he was a community figure. Link They didn’t get it.
I can’t think of another case where the reducing of a sentence was actively requested, rather than coming from the judge’s own cultural relativism, but it’s possible.
Galloise Blonde:
That was pretty ridiculous. I’m more worried about whether lobby groups would try and get cultural factors included in the legislation that governs the length of sentences. Perhaps I am just being pessimistic, as officials are increasingly refusing to indulge the idea that HBV is somehow a lesser crime.
Galloise Blonde,
Thanks for the response. Although it’s a bit devalued, I’d have thought ‘whatever works’ should be the criteria.
GBlonde #18:
analogy falls beyond a point: racism is actively offensive and any attack has concommitent effects in line with itself, whereas what you term HBV is defensive so as to maintain what is regarded as correct,
either micro-societally in recognition of it being ‘wrong’ but subsumed to maintain a higher virtue, thus a price worth paying,
or, in the case of the whole polity subscribing to this ethos, then it is not even considered wrong but laudable.
The 2nd case does not apply here, and for the 1st case, what would enhancing the sentence do?
Another aspect is that of honour being slighted in the perception of a community, so steps are taken sacrificially as a necessary evil; may be heightened in eg the case you cite /Dundee where some one had particular standing within a community.
However, to commision some one else to do the deed commercially exposes this for the sham it is.
Quite a few pioneers and their families went through great anguish, alone, to from the reactionary attitudes of their particular communities, until enough of the reactionaries’ progeny followed suite to make it less of an issue.
Some sections tho’ became more ghettoised and reactionary, largely as a reaction to the prevailing racism was that never dealt with, rather held as a baccilus for times like now.
As like many things, HBV could be dealt with and expunged within a few years if done sincerely, while the liberals amongst you dealt with the likes of Don(2) and Rio de Plata, the tip of an apparently vast growth in reactionism.
I’m not holding my breath though.
Indrak: I agree that racism and ghettoisation is a very signficant causal factor, but I don’t think that it’s the whole story. HBV is increasing globally, due to demographic and social reasons: it can’t all be reactionary backlash.
Gitainesque..:
very true that it’s global, same phnomena by no means restricted to here.
Yet Britain remains a global leader in many ways.
Tho quite characterisable as being between the continent and the US,
eg in how capitalist it is,
the latter’s spatial dilation osetensibly mitigates many dynamics- not just locally eg to create donut-cities /white-flight as a response to schools’ desegregating, but from california northwards.
+ just as globally religion was encouraged
[with muslims dwelling in an enormous contiguous band overlapping oil-areas] as a harmless cull-de-sac varient to political opposition,
in eg prisons here it was doubtless seen as a benign way of dealing with newly-troubling elements.
Again this Forest Gate case and what Nadim Kurrimbukus was charged for has been confused. Nadim Kurrimbukus has been charged for setting a white (not hindi or hindu) man alight in Templedene Avenue, Staines. (which I live in the next street from).
Staines is nowhere near Forest Gate. The Forest Gate incident is a completely different one from the Staines one. In the Forest Gate incident there were two attackers, in the Staines one there were one. The investigating police force is different, the chief inspector is different. And, knowing the affected family by sight I can tell you that the victim is white not hindu.
This case has not been mentioned much but when it has it has invariably been confused with the Forest Gate case, which is a *completely separate case*.
Nadim Kurrimbukus has nothing to do with the Forest Gate case. It is strange that two such similar incidents happened so close together in time in the same region of England (even though Staines and Forest Gate are quite far apart.) But they are not the same incident.
Oops. Thanks for that J.A.
THE VICTIM IS MUSLIM.. I KNO BECAUSE I LIVE TWO ROAD AWAY, THE ATTACKERS ARE BELIEVED TO BE HINDU/ SIKH
The victim is a MUSLIM, there is NO indication in any reports that the suspects were HINDU. This is typical of national press where a story that was correctly reported in the local paper here (http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/content/newham/recorder/news/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=newsNEWHAM&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsnewham&itemid=WeED18%20Jun%202008%2008%3A31%3A04%3A627) and when it hits the national papers it is tainted with lies. Wonder why? (intrinsic animosity I suppose) People just need an excuse to launch tirade of waffle. People should get their facts straight before venturing an opinion.
Mere Puppets….and who pulls your strings?
Thanks for the clarification, JA (#34). Indeed, the Staines case doesn’t appear to be an honour killing either, but rather old-fashioned revenge.
The accused and the victim were a gay couple who had recently broken up, from what I understand (having known the accused relatively well some years ago).