Can a song change the world? That depends on who you ask but there is no denying the arts has offered a voice to people or issues that otherwise go unheard. In the same vein, Palestinian hip hop group DAM use their latest track to confront the horrific issue of honour killings.
Released last week, the track sheds much needed light on the subject, where victims are murdered for having brought apparent dishonour upon their family or community. In the majority of cases, these crimes are carried out against women. Perceived acts of ‘dishonour’ include not wanting to participate in an arranged marriage, marrying outside religion or caste, adultery (or even suspicion of adultery), dressing unacceptably and homosexuality.
In dragging this issue out of the shadows where it normally languishes, the rappers are attempting to humanise the victims, demonstrating that a life was taken and that these victims are not merely statistics. Underscoring the seriousness of the project, DAM teamed up with UN Women to release the track.
The video for the song starts with a girl lying dead on the ground (the lyrics layered over the top translate to “Before she was murdered, she wasn’t alive. We’ll tell her story backwards from her murder to her birth”) before the images roll backwards and we see her death and then life played out in rewind. The video ends with a focus on a sculpture which spells out ‘Freedom for my sisters’ in Arabic.
While certainly focused on honour killings that occur in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, the song has international resonance as well. Honour killings are not confined to any one corner of the earth and the UN estimates that about 5,000 people are murdered every year across the world out of so-called “honour”. In India, estimates vary (these types of motives can be extremely hard to determine) however one BBC article from last month suggests that the number of honour killings each year is in the hundreds.
One such crime that occurred in Delhi in 2010 made headlines around the world last month when family members responsible for killing a young couple who wanted to marry outside of caste boundaries were sentenced to death. The categorisation of honour killings as a capital offence was ushered in last year by the Supreme Court in an effort to curb the occurrence of these murders across the country, stating rather grimly at the time that the gallows await any person planning to carry out this kind of crime. This statement brought about its own backlash, with India’s Law Commission releasing a report in August this year which outlined that the Supreme Court’s words were too rash, instead arguing that the death penalty should not be used as a hard and fast rule and that each case should be tried on its own merits.
The path towards successfully trying and convicting perpetrators of honour killings is a rocky one at best but in order to effectively eradicate the occurrence of honour killings altogether a shift in attitudes needs to occur. This video is a step in that direction. Share it far and wide.
Sources and links:
- DAM: damrap.com
- UN Women: unwomen.org
Author: Anna Rees/ RESET editorial
