Pregnant Woman Stoned to Death in ‘Honor Killing’
A pregnant woman was stoned to death by her own family outside a courtroom in Pakistan Tuesday.
Farzana Parveen’s father called her murder an “honor killing” because she married outside her family’s will.
“I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it,” her father told police.
Parveen reportedly married a man named Mohammad Iqbal for love. She was waiting in front of the court to testify in Iqbal’s defense because her father had accused him of kidnapping the 25-year-old woman.
Nearly 20 people attacked Parveen and her husband in broad daylight before a crowd of onlookers in front of the high court of Lahore, Pakistan.
The attackers included her father, brothers and her cousin, who was the man her father said she was supposed to marry.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reports that some 869 women were murdered in “honor killings” last year. About 1,000 women die every year in “honor killings,” according to The Washington Post.
Eighty-nine percent of Muslims who say Shariah should be law of the land in Pakistan support stonings for adultery, according to a Pew survey.
Though both men and women face stonings across 14 Muslim countries, women are more frequently the targets.
