Honour, my a s s

[Walter]

Three family members arrested in Rideau Canal drownings

July 22, 2009
Andrew Chung
Torstar News Service
MONTREAL – Three members of the Montreal family in which three sisters and their aunt were found dead in their car that that plunged into Kingston's Rideau Canal late last month were arrested today.

As well, Kingston police have announced a press conference for 2 p.m. tomorrow where the police chief will be outlining all of the details of a major change in focus of the investigation.

Up to now, the police were considering the deaths to be "suspicious."

The three suspects were apprehended this morning while heading to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, possibly to flee the country, La Presse newspaper reported. They were taken to Kingston. They are suspected of having killed the women, according to La Presse.

The Shafi family came to Canada from Afghanistan, via Dubai, and have lived in Montreal for the past two years.

The Shafi sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, all died along with their aunt Rona Amir Mohammed. The family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto when they stopped for the night at a motel in Kingston. The car was found the morning of June 30 in the canal.

While the family claimed one of the older sisters might have taken the car out in an ill-fated attempt to practise driving, the circumstances were always uncertain. The car, for instance, would have had to traversed numerous obstacles to make it into the water.

Neighbours of the Shafi family in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard told the Toronto Star that Montreal and Kingston police were at the Shafi home last night for at least three hours.

Earlier this month, the supervising regional coroner Dr. Roger Skinner, told the Star that the preliminary autopsy results were given to the family. However, the family repeatedly denied to the Star having received any such results from the coroner

 

[Walter]

Eerily similar.

Drownings leave Toronto family devastated
By THE CANADIAN PRESS
Last Updated: 23rd July 2009, 5:11am


A Toronto father is struggling to help his two sons cope with the loss of their mother and two sisters, who drowned in a hotel pool while vacationing in an eastern Ontario resort town.
Naila Yasmin, 43, a wife and mother of four, died in hospital on Sunday. Her 14-year-old daughter, Kinza Kaianad, died Monday evening and 11-year-old Sunaila Kaianad died Tuesday afternoon. All died at Kingston General Hospital.
Autopsy results suggest that Yasmin and her daughters, described as "non-swimmers," likely drowned in a 10-minute span Saturday.
The family patriarch and his two young sons were eating breakfast at the Best Western Country Squire Resort, where they were staying during their vacation to the Thousand Islands.
Now the father, identified as Muhammad Sana Ullah by Abdul Qayum of the Islamic Foundation of Toronto, must plan funeral arrangements and nurture his boys, described as between four and six years old. The family has lived in a highrise in the heart of the Pakistani community for more than five years.
The door was left ajar for those who knew the family to enter whispering soft messages of grief and support.
Hanif Ahmed, who lives down the hall from the family, said they were very close.
"They are a very good family," he said. "So attached."
A colleague who works with Ullah as a real estate agent at Homelife Victory Realty Inc. said he spoke with Ullah on Wednesday, after hearing the news from a family friend.
With both parents working -- Yasmin at a Tim Hortons -- the family had long planned to go on vacation this summer. Both girls attended nearby Thorncliffe Public School.
Good friends of the family who live in the building are currently taking care of Ullah's young sons.
Neighbours said Ullah was hoping to get permission from Pakistani authorities to fly the bodies of his wife and daughters to Pakistan.
OPP Sgt. Pierre Chamberland called the drownings "an unfortunate misadventure."
Foul play has been ruled out in the three deaths and autopsy results do not suggest the pool's chemicals played any role, said Gananoque police chief Kai Liu.

 

[taxslave]

Three family members arrested in Rideau Canal drownings

July 22, 2009
Andrew Chung
Torstar News Service
MONTREAL – Three members of the Montreal family in which three sisters and their aunt were found dead in their car that that plunged into Kingston's Rideau Canal late last month were arrested today.

As well, Kingston police have announced a press conference for 2 p.m. tomorrow where the police chief will be outlining all of the details of a major change in focus of the investigation.

Up to now, the police were considering the deaths to be "suspicious."

The three suspects were apprehended this morning while heading to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, possibly to flee the country, La Presse newspaper reported. They were taken to Kingston. They are suspected of having killed the women, according to La Presse.

The Shafi family came to Canada from Afghanistan, via Dubai, and have lived in Montreal for the past two years.

The Shafi sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, all died along with their aunt Rona Amir Mohammed. The family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto when they stopped for the night at a motel in Kingston. The car was found the morning of June 30 in the canal.

While the family claimed one of the older sisters might have taken the car out in an ill-fated attempt to practise driving, the circumstances were always uncertain. The car, for instance, would have had to traversed numerous obstacles to make it into the water.

Neighbours of the Shafi family in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard told the Toronto Star that Montreal and Kingston police were at the Shafi home last night for at least three hours.

Earlier this month, the supervising regional coroner Dr. Roger Skinner, told the Star that the preliminary autopsy results were given to the family. However, the family repeatedly denied to the Star having received any such results from the coroner

Didn't you know that it is their charter right to practice sharia law in Canada?

 

[Walter]

Were deaths of 4 women a matter of 'honour'? TheStar.com - Ontario - Were deaths of 4 women a matter of 'honour'?

That's a theory being pursued by police as family members are charged with first-degree murder in bizarre drownings of a woman and three teenaged girls in the Rideau Canal

July 24, 2009
Andrew Chung
In Kingston, Ont.
Daniel Dale
In Toronto

After the tragedy, the mother and father wept, while the eldest son lashed out in anger, each calling it an accident, a rebellious teenager's joyride gone terribly wrong.
Yesterday, as they filed, handcuffed, one by one, into the prisoners' box, prosecutors offered a much darker explanation, calling it murder.
Authorities are exploring the possibility the deaths of three sisters and another woman, found dead in their car in the Rideau Canal in Kingston, were an "honour" killing, a crime typically committed by males against female relatives perceived to have brought shame upon the family.
Father, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wearing a shy smile; mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 39, dabbing her eyes with a tissue; and son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia, with an icy stare, were all charged with four counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
They did not enter a plea, and were remanded into custody.
The Shafia sisters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17 and Geeti, 13 – died along with Rona Amir Mohammed, 50, on June 30. Their car, a Nissan Sentra, was found underwater near the Kingston Mills locks. The Montreal family was returning from a trip to Niagara Falls when they stopped for the night at a motel in Kingston.
Immediately after the incident, family members told reporters that Rona Amir Mohammed was the father's cousin. However, police now say she was, in fact, Shafia's first wife.
Trouble appears to have been percolating inside the Shafia household. Montreal's child protection agency, the Direction de la protection de la jeunesse, visited the family on three occasions several months ago, sources told La Presse in Montreal.
Hamed Mohammad Shafia was harsh and authoritarian with his sisters, police sources said, and Zainab had complained to police, who referred the matter to child protection services because the brother was not yet 18.
The charges indicate investigators believe the plans to commit the murders began as early as May.
Yesterday, Kingston Police Chief Stephen Tanner began a press conference with a moment of silence for the victims. They "all shared the rights within our great country to live without fear, to enjoy safety and security, and to exercise freedom of choice and expression and yet had their lives cut short by members of their own family."
Asked whether police believe the deaths were "honour" killings, as suggested in an email to police by Rona Amir Mohammed's sister Diba Masoomi, who lives in France, Tanner suggested it was possible but not certain and will form part of the investigation.
Neither Tanner nor Insp. Brian Begbie would directly give a motive for the murders. Tanner noted the behaviour of one or more of the teenagers may have played a role.
The Shafia family hails from Kabul, Afghanistan, one of the countries in which honour crimes are most common, and lived in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, for 15 years before arriving in Canada two years ago.
In the days following the deaths, family members speculated to reporters that one of the sisters, likely Zainab, might have taken the car to practise driving.
The family members said Zainab was rebellious and had taken the car in the past.
But this is "false," Begbie said. Investigators believe that on the night of the murders, the three accused operated the car. He did not say if the victims were dead before the car entered the water.
The family's version of events was always puzzling to investigators, particularly as to how the car made it through numerous obstacles to end in the water at the locks.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the deaths, the parents appeared to be distraught. On July 3, Shafia sobbed as he held a photo album in the family's home. "Three night no sleeping, no eating."
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.
Anver Emon, a University of Toronto law professor who specializes in Islamic law, said he sympathizes with such concerns but supports the employment of the phrase when justified by the facts.
"From a social perspective, you don't want to criminalize a community by associating them with a particular, heinous act of violence," Emon said.
"On the other hand, from a legal perspective ... why `honour killing' can be useful is that it captures the idea of a kind of premeditation – that this wasn't an in-the-moment, spur-of-the-moment crime of passion but something that may have been planned. . . . It speaks to a kind of evil and hideousness that we must at all times prevent."

 

[Walter]

Christie Blatchford

It's no accident that victims were all female

Was this a gaudy example of those magnificently misnamed 'honour' killings?


Christie Blatchford
Last updated on Friday, Jul. 24, 2009

They were brought up to court separately, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the mother – the mama bear, to borrow from the old Goldilocks and the Three Bears children's story – first.
Slight and pale, wearing a modest black tunic top over matching pants, cuffed at the wrist and ankle, her small chin quivered now and then, but she held it together – she is an Afghan, after all, tough and proud – until, as part of a court procedure, the prosecutor read aloud the names of her four surviving children.
At the naming of the last, a girl, the 39-year-old Ms. Yahya began to sob, quite uncontrollably.
How sad that was, and how fitting: Girls, women and the XX chromosomes that mark the female of the species appear to have everything to do with what Kingston Police now allege was mass murder.

It's no accident that victims were all female - The Globe and Mail

 

[Liberalman]

Yes it was an honour killing not Canadian honour but their homeland honour.

Canada is a multicultural country and we give certain rights to new Canadians that come to this country like freedom of religion and the right to practise your culture as you see fit as long as it doesn’t break any Canadian laws.

I was listening to the Kingston press conference on TV and the police did not answer most of the questions because it is an ongoing case they identified the occupants in the car a 52 year old women and three sisters ages 19, 15,13 and the 52 year old woman was the first wife of the father that is accused with his other family members of killing the people.

In my opinion the first wife decided to live the free Canadian lifestyle and she was teaching the children to do the same which infuriated the ex-husband to the point of seeing this as blasphemy or a personal attack on his God and like all fanatics he decided to follow his perception of God’s law and send his ex-wife and daughters to the promised land.

At the press conference the police chief kept repeating that the deceased were living the free Canadian lifestyle afforded to all Canadians.

It is a honour killing and one day when immigration officials can develop a psychological test to find the fanatics and keep them out of this country we will have to put up with this.

 

[#juan]

There is no honour in murdering children, or murdering anyone for that matter. For me, this mass killing simply proves that a lot of Muslims are insane. What would we call anyone who murders their children for "honour", but insane?

 

[Liberalman]

most fanatics are insane

 

[DurkaDurka]

I think calling these people insane is doing a disservice to people who are mentally ill. These people brought their barbaric cultural practises with them to Canada and we don't seem to say squat about it until something like this happens.

 

[#juan]

I think calling these people insane is doing a disservice to people who are mentally ill. These people brought their barbaric cultural practices with them to Canada and we don't seem to say squat about it until something like this happens.

I guess there is a difference between the insane, and the criminally insane. This is the same culture that has people strap explosives on their bodies and blow thirty or forty people besides themselves to the promised land, and injuring at least that many as well. Their religion tells them their suicide will land them at the feet of Allah. I don't know what the remedy is.

 

[lone wolf]

That's what happens when we trip over ourselves to appease the newcomers. We lose our identity ... and First Peoples lost Heaven on Earth

 

[Walter]

... and First Peoples lost Heaven on Earth

Tell that to the Wendat.

 

[AnnaG]

Get off my continent. lol
Muslims are no more sane or more insane than anyone else. Quit being bigotted.

 

[gerryh]

I guess there is a difference between the insane, and the criminally insane. This is the same culture that has people strap explosives on their bodies and blow thirty or forty people besides themselves to the promised land, and injuring at least that many as well. Their religion tells them their suicide will land them at the feet of Allah. I don't know what the remedy is.

as opposed to western countries who strap their young men into high powered aircraft to drop high explosives onto innocents from above. Oh yes, our way of doing it soooooooo much better.:roll:

 

[Tonington]

Didn't you know that it is their charter right to practice sharia law in Canada?

Except those parts of it which don't conform to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So, basically all the stuff you've been told to be fearful of.

 

[AnnaG]

hehe There is also a Chartered right that natives can practise our own laws, too. Besides that there's Chartered rights that thousands of people take advantage of to practise law. Some are palefaces, some are Negroid, some are aboriginal, some are Chinese, etc. lol

 

[Nuggler]

That's what happens when we trip over ourselves to appease the newcomers. We lose our identity ... and First Peoples lost Heaven on Earth

Right, damn newbs;-)

 

[lone wolf]

Right, damn newbs;-)

8O D'OH!.... Never thought of it that way....

 

[Walter]

Robert Fulford: Western feminists mute on ravages of shariah
Posted: July 25, 2009, 11:00 AM by NP Editor Robert Fulford,

Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, an angry Khartoum journalist who works for the UN in Sudan, has started a campaign against shariah law by elevating a local police matter into an international embarrassment: She’s invited the world to witness her judicial flogging, thus making her case part of the struggle between religious traditionalists and independent women — a struggle that now may encompass the quadruple murder that was revealed a world away, in Kingston, Ont., on Thursday.

In Khartoum, the General Discipline Police Authority patrols the streets, charged with maintaining shariah standards of public decency. Recently it raided a restaurant and arrested 13 women, including al-Hussein, for the crime of … wearing trousers.

Since 1991, that’s been a violation of the Sudanese criminal code. More precisely, it is classified as a violation of public morality. While erratically enforced, the rule is serious enough to carry a penalty of 40 lashes. Ten of the women arrested with al-Hussein pleaded guilty and received a reduced sentence of 10 lashes. But al-Hussein and two others demanded their day in court and al-Hussein decided to provoke a scandal by distributing 500 personal invitations to her trial. She expects to be found guilty (she won’t be allowed a lawyer or a chance to speak), so she informed her guests that they’ll also be expected at her flogging.

The French government has condemned the law, and in Cairo the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has launched a campaign to defend al-Hussein and the others. ANHRI also protested a suit brought by the police against another journalist, Amal Habbani, for an article praising al-Hussein (“A Case of Subduing a Woman’s Body”). The police claim that the mere act of defending female pants-wearing also violates General Discipline.

When stories such as al-Hussein’s flash around the world, there’s usually a missing element: The feminist movement rarely becomes part of the narrative. The rise of shariah law constitutes the major global change in women’s status during this era, yet Western feminists remain pathetically silent.

Feminist journalists like to speculate about the future of activism among women today, but you can leaf through a fat sheaf of their articles without encountering a mention of Muslim women. Feminist professors, for their part, show even less interest. Trolling through the 40-page program of the European Conference on Politics and Gender, held in Belfast last winter, I found feminist scholars (from Europe, the United States and Canada) dealing with women’s political opportunities, the implications for women of new medical technology, the politics of fashion and even women’s response to climate change. What I couldn’t find was even one lecture or discussion devoted to so-called “honour killing.” Nor was there any mention of the thousands upon thousands of women routinely flogged, raped, imprisoned or stoned to death, often with the tacit or explicit agreement of Islamic governments.

The recent Kingston murders — in which a Quebec couple stand accused of killing their three daughters (and the man’s first wife) because, according to one relative, the daughters had adopted disgracefully Western habits — apparently demonstrate that the oppression of women can be imported into countries where it has no support in law. Honour killing, far from being an isolated remnant of a primitive past, seems to be increasingly widespread.

Ayse Onal, a leading Turkish journalist, says in her book, Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed, that in Turkey alone honour killings average about one a day — 1,806 were reported in the period between 2000 and 2005, a number I found astonishing.
The justifications for this crime, passed by word of mouth, apparently encourage young men and boys to consider it appropriate punishment for even trivial offences of females. Onal quotes a 14-year-old boy who slit his 16-year-old sister’s throat in the public market of the town of Urfa. Asked if he was remorseful, he explained that she had been “going about in cafés” and he had cleansed his dignity by killing her. Sentenced to 10 years, he served 34 months. (The use of brothers to commit the vile deed is a particularly horrible aspect of honour killings. In the Kingston murders, it is worth noting, one of those arrested was the alleged killers’ 18-year-old son.)

Once in a while, a few women in the West notice. On Monday, Pamela Geller, a conservative blogger in the United States, suggested that women everywhere should stand up for al-Hussein. She called the silence of women’s movements “scandalous, shameful, complicit in the horrible suppression of women in Islam.” But more typical is the feminist blog of Deborah Kate, who acknowledges that feminists have been accused of ignoring Muslim women. Kate comes out against stoning, enforced marriage, female circumcision, etc., and wonders idly whether countries guilty of crimes against women deserve sanctions like those levelled at South Africa in its apartheid days. No, she decides, exhibiting the fondness for fashionable moral relativism that is now epidemic in feminist circles, “I realize I cannot force my version of feminism upon non-Western women.”

In Sudan, Lubna Ahmed Al-Hussein has declared, “I am fighting for all women.” But in our world, not all of them understand or care.

 

[VanIsle]

as opposed to western countries who strap their young men into high powered aircraft to drop high explosives onto innocents from above. Oh yes, our way of doing it soooooooo much better.:roll:

No way of doing it is better but - we don't force anyone to join the armed forces for one thing and we don't threaten their families if they don't strap themselves in.