The murder of 13-year-old Aya that Joanne mentioned:
A Tunisian man is accused of burning his 13-year-old daughter to death for walking home from school with a male classmate May 28 in Ibn Khaldoun, a suburb of Tunis.
Aya, a middle school student, died on June 7 from fourth-degree burns, Kapitalis and other local news sources reported.
“The father has been arrested since the incident occurred,” Allala Rouhma, a spokesperson for the Tunis Court of First Instance, told Tunisia Live. The father’s name has not been released.
Aya spent nine days in the Ben Arous Hospital for Burns and Injuries before succumbing to her injuries.
Those must have been nine horrible days. Burns are painful beyond imagining.
One group of activists called for a silent march in her memory on June 19. The Facebook event, ‘Aya, Voice of the Victim,’ called on Tunisians to participate and denounce her death and honor killings.
“This act is nothing more than a sign of a sick and suffering society that continues to demonize the female gender,” said the event’s page.
“What happened is strange in our society,” Feten Abdelkafi, one of the event’s organizers, told Tunisia Live.
“The poor girl was just returning from school with her classmate. I can’t believe that a father could do such a thing to his daughter,” she added.
Activists have called for greater media coverage of Aya’s death.
“I cannot believe that this case could fall into oblivion. What happened is an unacceptable crime. Further, the reactions of some people who justify this barbaric act reflect the degree of ignorance that prevails in the country,” activist and blogger Lina ben Mhenni wrote in a Facebook post.
The Facebook page I Too Was Abused was created in solidarity with Aya’s cause. The page has launched a hashtag #moi_aussi_j_ai_été_violentée, French for “I too was abused,” to encourage women to tell their stories and take a stand against all forms of violence.
It mustn’t fall into oblivion.
Aya’s father not only killed his daughter but did it in a particularly horrible way. But Simon Longstaff thinks whether or not the father was justified in torturing Aya should be discussed.
My jaw is on the floor and I can’t see to find it.
I think I’m going to puke now… This is honour?
Wow. You can not reason with these people.
Makes me want to take a knife, carve a picture of Mohamed in their bodies, and let them die.
I’m too civilized to do that kind of thing, but they are not.
Sometimes the horror visited on young women by men, men often their fathers and brothers, is truly daunting to even hear of from afar. Thank-you for making sure the story moves out into the light and is seen. And damn the cultural practice of reptilian killings. They are not only religious but a cultural cancer where one’s own flesh and blood can be so readily othered that they are suddenly worthy of a torture and death. Reminds me of Old Testament bullshit. Now I will go and be sick.
I’m just numb from all of this.
I just can’t imagine what it’s like to languish in such horrible pain for three days before succumbing to you burns.
I don’t have the words to say how much I despise this notion of “honour”. What honour is there in horribly murdering your own child.
What can it be like to live in fear of your own father and brothers, as millions must in too many countries.
We (mostly) treat animals more humanely than these barbarians treat their fellow human beings and family.
Stop the planet, I want to get off.