On July 17, 2013, Mohammad Darrar Jammo, head of the political and international relations service at the World Organization of Arab Expatriates, was killed at dawn in the Lebanese region of Sarafand, pierced by around 27 bullets. Investigations revealed that Siham Younes, Jammo’s wife, had planned to kill him in collusion with her brother and her nephew who carried out the crime because Jammo, according to the wife’s statement, was not paying for her expenses and had told her he intended to marry another woman, move to Syria, and take his daughter with him.
A few days ago, another woman murdered her husband. Hussein Fadel’s wife killed him, cut his body into pieces, and threw them in the Ghadir River with the help of her two sons and their friend. The wife said during the investigation that she killed her husband because he mistreated her and her children. Another account has it that she was in a relationship with one of her children’s friends, which prompted her to kill her husband and get rid of the body.
KAFA (‘enough’ in English) Violence & Exploitation recorded 15 murders and suicides in the first few months of 2013 as a result of domestic violence against women. Some women died as a result of their husbands’ beatings, others were shot to death, and others still committed suicide.
Are there any points of comparison between instances of women killing their husbands (often with the help of their children and brothers) to men killing their wives?
According to Nadia Issawi, a researcher and secretary of the Mediterranean Women’s Fund, “the percentage of crimes against women runs high and is nowhere near comparable to the crimes committed by women against men, knowing that motives and reasons vary too. Violence against women often aims to assert man’s control and social and legal supremacy. In contrast, a crime committed by a women against a man often aims to put an end to this control. For a woman to reach this stage means that she has gone through tough circumstances.”
KAFA Attorney Leila Awada argued that any comparison between crimes committed by women and those committed by men does not stand, as men and women do not have the same status or social and legal rights, not to mention different backgrounds. Awada said there are two kinds of crimes, one that has the purpose of killing, which is a public crime, whereas the second falls within the framework of domestic violence. “A man can decide to kill his wife on purpose, and vice versa. The murder may also be unintentional such as when a man only wants to discipline his wife and beats her up as he believes he is entitled to. The woman ultimately dies as a result of the beating, as was the case with many women, including Rola Yaacoub. This second kind of crimes is typical behavior towards women, one which is excused by society and which has no similarity with any crime committed by a woman.”
Awada commented on society’s manner of dealing with women, whether killers or victims, saying: “When a man kills his wife, they wonder what she has done to deserve being killed and look for excuses to justify his act. When a woman kills, no one wonders about the reasons that led her to commit this crime; rather, society readily pins the accusation on her and looks for reasons to convict her” and seeks to prove that women, too, are violent creatures that commit crimes just like men.
Nadia Issawi rejects the rhetoric whereby women are nonviolent creatures; rather, she says, violence is a primitive instinct that is common to both men and women. It is born with them and grows according to their family, emotional, and social environments. It is mainly affected by the extent to which they are allowed to express this violence. “Society values men’s violence and allows men to bring it out whereas women are banned from doing so. They often turn this inner violence, which they receive, towards themselves and thus become masochists, or turn it towards their children who are weaker than them and over whom they have total authority. In rare cases, they turn this violence towards their partners.”
In many cases, women committed suicide and investigations revealed that they decided to put an end to their lives because of the domestic violence to which they are exposed. “Women accumulate the violence they receive and end up killing themselves or their tormentor, since there is no law that protects them,” says Leila Awada. She goes on saying she is against violence in general and that adopting the law protecting women from domestic violence avoids their committing acts of violence to defend themselves. “Had there been a law that protects women and a society that does not excuse violence against them, they would not have reached this stage.”
Violence is, thus, a complicated phenomenon expressed on multiple levels and based on intricate reasons. It can be, as Nadia Issawi says, a survival instinct and, at the same time, a practice that serves a system built on exploiting and controlling the weakest. Still, Issawi argues, “the symbolic value of violence differs depending on whether it has been committed by a woman on a man or vice versa even though the principle of penal sanction is the same.”
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/when-domestic-violence-goes-the-other-way
