The murder of a 22-year-old Iraqi girl by her father YouTube fan due to a “family feud” sparked outrage in the country, where femicide committed by relatives are frequent.
Tiba al-Ali was killed by her father on the night of January 31 in Diwaniyah province, she reported on Twitter on Friday. saad maanspokesman for the Ministry of the Interior.
According to the official, the police had attempted mediation between the young woman and her entourage to “definitively resolve a family dispute.”
In recordings of their conversations shared on social networks, it is heard that his father he was annoyed that Tiba al Ali lived alone in Turkey. Then the young woman accused her brother of having sexually harassed her.
The spokesman explained that a police unit had intervened. After a first meeting “we had to go back, then we were surprised by the news of his murder by his father, who made the first confession when he turned himself in to the police.”
The family traveled to Turkey in 2017 but upon returning Tiba al-Ali refused. He has since lived far from his country, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
His assassination occurred while he was visiting Iraq.
On her YouTube account, the young woman shared videos of her life in which her fiancé appeared many times.
The drama sparked outrage and activist groups called for a demonstration outside a Baghdad court on Sunday.
“The women of our societies are hostages of outdated customs due to the absence of dissuasive laws and government measures that are not up to the task of domestic violence”, former Kurdish deputy Ala Talabani deplored on Twitter.
The organization International Amnesty (AI) on Friday called on Iraq to take serious steps in its legislation to protect women from gender violence, after the murder.
“As long as the Iraqi authorities do not adopt strong legislation to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, we will inevitably continue to witness horrific murders like the one suffered by Tiba Ali, at the hands of her own father,” it said in a statement. AI’s Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Regional Programme, Aya Majzoub.
This news unleashed a series of comments condemning this honor killing and calling for responsibilities under the label of “We demand Tiba’s rights.”
“Iraq has not criminalized domestic violence despite increased reporting of domestic violence incidents by national NGOs. Remarkably, the Iraqi Penal Code continues to leniently treat so-called “honor killings”, which include violent acts such as assault and even murder,” Majzoub noted.
A domestic violence bill was introduced and debated in the Iraqi Parliament in 2019 and 2020, but has since stalled.
In 2020, UN agencies in Iraq expressed concern about the increase in the number of cases of domestic violence during the pandemic.
“The murder of Tiba Ali must be investigated, the perpetrator has been brought to justice and the sentence must be proportional to the seriousness of this terrible crime, without resorting to the death penalty,” concluded Majzoub.
(With information from AFP and EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com