No-one comes to commemorate the dead in the silent section set aside for femicides in Siwan cemetery near Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî), where the graves are numbered instead of named from listings in forensic institutions, according to an AFP report quoted by Fırat News Agency (ANF).
Most of the murders fall into two main categories: wives murdered by abusive husbands, or daughters and sisters murdered by fathers and brothers to protect the ‘honour’ of their families. Feminist lawyer Rozkar İbrahim, speaking to AFP from the cemetery, said that the women are buried in secret by night, so that their relatives “don’t know where the graves are and don’t come to demolish them”.
İbrahim visits the cemetery on a regular basis and has been working for years to identify the unknown number of girls and women and uncover their stories, telling many stories of tragedy, such as that of a woman who fell in love, became pregnant, and tried to flee the country with her lover and child. The woman (17) was found in June by relatives, who murdered both her and the baby. “They are buried here,” she said.
Osman Salih, one of the gravediggers at Siwan, said that over the past 15 years he has buried 200 girls and women, some as young as 13.
In 2011 the Kurdistan Region of Iraq passed a law against domestic violence, which was applauded by Amnesty International, though AI researcher Razaw Salihy said that “femicide and the mutilation of women and girls, mostly by their male relatives” is taking place “at an alarming rate” in the Kurdistan Region. She also noted that “an extremely low rate” of convictions encourages a culture of impunity.
Sulaimaniyah’s Forensic Medicine Office Director Barzan Mohammed said that most victims were killed by shooting, though he also spoke of “strangulation with bare hands or with rope”.
Banaz (43) was beaten and threatened with death by her husband, so fled back to her own family, only to be further beaten by her brother who told her to obey her husband. “He put a gun to my head in front of my children twice,” she said. Eventually she fled the country in fear of ending up in Siwan cemetery.
