[BRIEF NOTE] On the end to a Canadian honour killing

[rfmcdonald]

The sad story of Aqsa Parvez, a Pakistani-Canadian teen murdered in 2007 by her father and brother for having the temerity to want to live an independent life and to not wear the hijab, came to one sort of end, at least, when her father and brother surprised everyone by pleading guilty.

Muhammad Parvez, 60, and son Waqas, 29, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the 16-year-old Mississauga high school student’s death on the morning of Dec. 10, 2007.

But whose bare hands were around the Grade 11 student's neck remains unknown.

In pleading guilty, neither the father nor the son took sole blame for the murder, admitting only that they both were responsible for causing the neck compressions that led to her death.

Aqsa's blood was on Muhammad's hands when he was arrested after he called 911 and confessed to using his hands to murder his youngest daughter, according to the agreed statement filed as an exhibit in a Brampton courtroom.

DNA results also showed Waqas's DNA was under Aqsa's right hand finger nails, court was told.

What shocked me was what her mother told police.

In a chilling police interview on the day of Aqsa's murder, her distraught mother, crying and talking out loud to herself, was recorded as saying she thought her husband was only going to “break legs and arms,” but instead “killed her.”

“Oh God, Oh God. . . Oh my Aqsa, you should have listened,” Anwar Jan said out loud in a police interview room. “Everyone tried to make you understand. Everyone begged you, but you did not listen. . .”

She earlier told police in her interview that she advised her husband to let their daughter go, not to kill her.

When she asked him why he killed her, he told her: “This is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.”

She said her husband never said he would kill her.

She told the officer that in her Pakistani culture, if a daughter doesn't listen to her parents, she is punished. “Either they kill the girl or turn her out of the house,” she said.

She thought that her husband would only maim her daughter? Am I reading in too much, but did she think it was her daughter's fault for provoking her menfolk?

You know how there are some people you just want to feel guilty and depressed and conflicted for the rest of their days?

Here's to hoping.