family members charged, media goes nuts.

when i first read the news about four women found dead, their car submerged in the kingston locks i thought it was really strange. how did the car get there? anyone who has seen the kingston locks had the same reaction because it seems practically impossible for the car to have been where it was.

so when i read the news yesterday and saw that the mother, father, and brother had been charged with murder and conspiracy it kind of made sense. in canada the statistics on domestic violence and child abuse are off the charts. we have a huge problem in this country where children are abused or murdered, molested or neglected at a disturbingly high rate.

when i read that the kingston police were suggesting that this murder was an "honour killing" i realized that, despite how blatantly these deaths highlight our national and global problems with violence against women and children, they were going to be defined as something else, as something that isn't native to this country, as an imported problem.

the family in question is originally from afghanistan. when you're afghani parents and you kill your daughters(or are accused of killing your daughters), you've killed them over honour/their behaviour/tradition etc. when you're just a plain old canadian and you kill your child, you're a murderer and you did it for more complex reasons or you're just plain crazy.

also, media, let's not act like abuse in this country perpetuated by white people isn't the same thing as an honour killing. they share the same strong root in an overall sexist world where women are devalued and treated like property or garbage. when a little while girl is murdered, we don't automatically start yelling "honour killing! it was an honour killing!"

my colleague elle and i were discussing this and she mentioned how differently the media is covering this as opposed to how they have been covering the tori stafford dissapearance/murder. in the case of tori stafford they constantly displayed her photo and commented on her cuteness , what a pretty little girl she was and when they finally identified the child's remains the police chief warned parents about the "evils" of the world and suggested they keep their little girls safe.

to even suggest that tori stafford had been the victim of an honour killing would have been received as beyond ridiculous and completely improbable. but had tori stafford been a little afghani girl, the coverage would have shifted. tori stafford's murder is the result of "evil", of someone's craziness and badness, but the three sisters from montreal's murder is a result of "culture" and this distinction separates both crimes from their structural root.

according to reports, child protection services had been called to the home of the montreal family several times because of possible abusive behaviour, "honour killing" is still abuse, it's still murder, and i think the media needs to stop using it as an excuse for 'canadians' to act as though things like that don't happen here, in this country.

in the toronto star andrew chung wrote that "the application of the phrase "honour killing" can be contentious, particularly for minority communities that fear being collectively tarred by the violence of a small number of people."

i agree, but i also think that the term honour killing should be contentious because it separates out certain abuses from others instead of forcing us to look at the broad and wide-ranging issues of violence against women and child abuse.