As someone who reads the paper a lot, and is also prone to generalisations, when I read stories about a woman of Asian* descent being murdered, my first thought is "The husband or his family or her parents did it", as was the case here, here or here.
As I popped out for a cigarette last year, I got chatting to an electrician from The Comedy Theatre, who told me that mates of his in the police knew perfectly well that it was her 'grieving' husband wot dunnit and they were determined to convict him. Now, say what you like about the police, they look after their own and do not tolerate Bobbicide** ... skip the middle bit ... said husband has now been charged with arranging her murder.
Heh heh, no doubt I'll be called an Islamophobe for posting this.
* Which really means 'Pakistan, India, Bangladesh', heck knows why they call it 'Asian', doesn't Asia include Russia and China?
** If that's a word.
Merry Christmas
1 hour ago
3 comments:
Islamophobe, no, you're just not "enlightened" enough to see how British law should be relaxed in certain areas to accomodate certain cultural traits. Perhaps you should spend some time with the Archbishop of Cantebury, I'm sure he could "enlighten" you?
There are plenty of reasons for a critical attitude to Islam, but the word 'Islamophobe' implies a reaction based on assumed religious affiliation rather than factual connection.
In the reports linked, the only reference I could see to religion was that Nisha Patel had a Hindu funeral service. Not, of course, that Hinduism is without fault in the matter of wife-killing, given the famous example of suttee.
The real logic problem with your first generalization is that the statement 'the husband/wife did it' is in fact a very good bet regardless of ethnicity. We tend to murder people because we know them, not because we don't.
Statistical evidence for that view, however, seems not as instantly available as I would have expected - so I'll have another little dig, because it is a interesting question. I believe it, 50p says most police officers believe it, so what are we basing our beliefs on?
The current Home Office stats don't give the break-down which would throw light on this matter. Even looking at the basic figures can only be regarded as a trend (fair enough - it is labelled 'trend') because there could be disputed classification of what constitues a homicide e.g. do you have to wait until there is a conviction, or can a death be counted in the year it occurs if it can be established that someone died as a result of the actions of person(s) unknown.
The two relevant graphs are
homicides
death by dangerous driving
What I began to wonder, and cannot yet answer, was this: we definitely collect data - somewhere - on racially aggravated offences. Do we classify the group of killings which you mentioned in the beginning as racially aggravated offences (RAO) and therefore at least include them in the raw figures? If we don't classify them as RAO, why not? They aren't all being killed purely on the basis of being female or having difficult personal relationships - two possible explanations which may apply regardless of religion - some of them are being done away with in a specific cultural context. It just so happens that they are being killed by co-religionists rather than the yobs next door.
This HoC paper gives some breakdown of data up to the mid-90s, but it was published in 1999 and the situation may have changed since then.
RESEARCH PAPER 99/56
27 MAY 1999
HOMICIDE STATISTICS
Figures for particular types of homicide, such as those involving firearms or ethnic minority victims, are presented.
This looks like the relevant snippet:
Almost four fifths of female victims and just over half of male victims knew their killer. A
present or former partner or lover killed almost half of female victims.
If this is boadly correct, then out of five dead women: one was killed by a stranger, four of them knew their killer, and two of them knew their killer very well indeed.
I ought to declare a long interest in cases of false conviction of family members for killings. There are several very well known ones, but more cases than is comfortable are brought on the basis that the police arrest the nearest spouse/parent and go for a quick clean-up rate. The ubiquity of the belief 'the relatives dun it' is argued to be short-circuiting juries and creating a dual level of culpability. If you are accused of murdering a stranger, the prosecution will have to fight harder to show the causation between you and the event, but if you are accused of offing a relative, that alone is enough get the juries to disregard the lack of hard evidence.
Probably the most famous example included ex-teacher Sion Jenkins, who stood trial three times before the case was finally ditched, but there are far too many others.
WOAR, also worth noting is that the husband in this case was a Muslim, and he was the one doing the murdering.
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