Silly Little Country

Murder is murder

I'm with the Canadian Council of Muslim Women!

The Canadian Council of Muslim Women opposes the addition of "honour killings" to the Criminal Code on the grounds "murder is murder" and a special category could stigmatize new immigrants and some ethnic or religious groups.

So this is all over the news because Rona Ambrose misspoke once again (I like to watch her misspeak - she is cute) and suggested that the Justice Department was 'looking at' honor killing as a special category.
The point should surely be that it is NOT a special category. What happens when one makes it a special category is that one starts to relativize it and invite the special pleaders to start whining that the poor little murderers could not help it because of the expectations of their community. Keep the damned community out of this sort of discussion - it only pollutes our society to even think about that.
That perhaps many people connived in a murder seems to me only a good reason to file charges against a lot more people.
So I hope these law professors are right:

Three law professors said the first-degree murder provisions of the Criminal Code already contain all the tools needed to prosecute and punish those who commit "honour killings" and they knew of no Canadian judge or jury who treated cultural family "honour" as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

I'm not so confident but cannot see how creating a special category for this sort of murder helps anyone.
Weirdly, I think I may agree with an NDPer:

Nova Scotia NDP MP Megan Leslie said the government has undermined its own case by cutting programs to help immigrant women, denying settlement services to refugees and stripping "equality rights" from the mandate of the Status of Women office.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 11:16 AM