Aqsa Parvez Murdering Father and Brother Plead Guilty in Islamic Honor Killing

Aqsa Parvez’s murder was a gender-based crime motivated by patriarchal concepts of honour and shame, which the defendants had chosen to adopt,” Crown attorney Mara Basso told the court.

Pathetic.

She had no privacy, not even in her bedroom, which had to be passed through by her parents whenever they went to their own room. A part of her bedroom wall was even removed, providing a view inside to her parents, her seven siblings or the wives of three of her brothers who also lived in the house.

Her telephone access was restricted. She was not allowed to socialize and had to go straight home after school and was expected to remain with her family on weekends.

And when she told her father in 2006 that she no longer wished to wear the hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women, it was done at a school-arranged mediation with officials of the Children’s Aid Society and India Rainbow Services present.

He refused to permit it.

The familial conflict over Pakistani tradition and Western culture in the year leading to her slaying documented in court the so-called “honour killing” nature of the crime, a contention that was controversial at the time of her death.

The Parvez patriarch came to Canada from Pakistan in 1999 with his eldest son and was granted refugee status. In 2001, the matriarch, Anwar Jan, joined him along with their seven other children, including Aqsa who was 11.

“All of the women in the family dressed traditionally. None of the women in the family worked outside the home. The women were financially dependent on the men,” says an agreed statement of facts read in court.

“The marriages of all of the children were traditionally arranged. All the children married their cousins from Pakistan, who subsequently immigrated to Canada.”

A husband had already been picked out in Pakistan for Aqsa and arrangements between the families were underway.

A year before her murder, Aqsa confided to friends and school officials of arguments at home. She said a sister who also attended Applewood High School was spying on her and reporting to her father.

School officials met with her father on Sept. 17, 2007, court heard. He said he intended to pull Aqsa out of the public school and enrol her in an Islamic school. Aqsa was asked what she wanted and she said she wished to stay at Applewood. After discussions, he agreed to let her stay.

Privately, however, she told school officials she was afraid to return home because of what had taken place. She said that she had been told by her father to say she wished to leave.

“Aqsa told her counsellor that she was afraid her father would kill her because she did not say what she was supposed to,” according to the statement of facts.

The counsellor arranged for her to stay at a shelter that night. At the end of the school day she returned to the counsellor’s office, shaken. Her father and a sister were waiting for her outside the school. The counsellor took her out the back door and into a taxi to the shelter.

[…]

The week before her death, as she lived at a friend’s house, she prepared a résumé in her quest for a part-time job.

“During this week, Aqsa appeared happy and determined to start a new life for herself,” says the statement. What she did not know was that her brother, Waqas, was trying to get a gun, telling a colleague that he was going to kill his sister and his father was going to take the blame.

On Monday, Dec. 10, 2007, Aqsa was waiting for a bus to take her to school. Before it arrived, Waqas pulled up in a van.

“Oh my God, he is here again,” she told a friend, adding she would be right back. She got into her brother’s van at 7:20 a.m.

Asqa was strangled in her room and her father called a family meeting — motioning with his hands how he had killed her — before, at 7:56 a.m., phoning 911 to say he had “killed his daughter” with his own hands.

At 8:03 a.m. police arrived and found Aqsa lying face up on her bed. She had no vital signs and blood dribbled from her nose.

Inside the home were 11 family members.