Report From Pakistan: 869 Women Were Victims Of Honor Killings In 2013

Let us pray for the women of Pakistan, for all people of Pakistan. Let us pray for a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit in that country where all will come to see the light of Jesus Christ! Amen! As a crowd watched outside a courthouse, the family of a pregnant Pakistani woman beat her to death last week because she married the man she loved instead of her cousin.

Lahore police charged her father, Mohammad Azeem, with murder, and the others were being sought. Azeem told police he helped kill his daughter because she had shamed the family.The 25-year-old woman’s father, brother and spurned fiance were among about a dozen male relatives who used bricks and clubs in the so-called honor killing of Farzana Parveen for disobeying her family’s wishes. She suffered massive head injuries and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

“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,” police investigator Rana Mujahid quoted him as saying.

Parveen was attacked as she and her husband, Mohammad Iqbal, arrived at the gates of the Lahore High Court. They went there to dispute charges brought by her father that Iqbal had kidnapped Parveen, who had been engaged to her cousin for several years.

Iqbal, 45, was a widower with five children when he began seeing Parveen, he told the Associated Press.

“We were in love,” he said.

Iqbal alleged her family wanted to extort money from him before following through with the arranged marriage to her cousin.

Every year, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Pakistani women are killed by their families for actual or imagined adultery or premarital sex. Public stoning is rare, however.

Last month, the private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that 869 women were victims of honor killings in 2013.