Forced Forgiveness: Tragedy and Pressure in 'Girl in the River'

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"I forgive them for the world; I forgive them because of family pressure, because of societal pressure. But in my heart, they will always be unforgiven" (NPR Staff).
Imagine being in that position, resenting and hating someone so much yet being forced to forgive him or her for the injustice they did. Imagine being put in this position solely due to your family disapproving of the man whom you wanted to marry and wanted to kill you. In the Oscar winning documentary “Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness” by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy this is the position Saba is in. The documentary tells the story of Saba, an 18 year old girl who’s father and uncle attempt to kill her due to her marrying someone whom they did not approve of in order to protect …show more content…

Of these 93,000 women, 47% were killed by members of their family and intimate partners. 13,400 of these women were killed in Africa, 19,700 in Asia, 6,900 in America, 3,300 in Europe, and 200 in Oceania. (United Nations, 2014: Pg 14). The Forth World Conference on Women (in the Beijing Declaration) defined violence against women as “ a manifestation of the historically unequal power relations between men and women, which have led to domination over and discrimination against women by men and to the prevention of women’s full advancement.” (United Nations, …show more content…

If a man is assumed to be homosexual he maybe subjected to honour killing or honour suicide. Honour killing of LGBT people has become more frequent, as more urban areas in conservative countries experience increases in the numbers of the people who are open with their sexuality. The families of those people, often those who still live in less developed areas, believe these to be shameful thoughts and take it upon themselves to correct these transgressions. This trend gained international attention when in 2008 Ahmet Yildiz was killed by his father, Yahya, in Istanbul. Such crimes are not reported often in Turkey, so the few (16) reports compiled by gay rights organizations are predicted to drastically underrepresent the true numbers of honour killings. Recently another man came forward admitting proudly to have killed his brother. The situation is worsened by the fact that the government officially acknowledges homosexuality as an “illness” and barely investigates complaints made by the LGBT community. (Hilton, 2011)

There is a need to spread awareness of honour killing in order to bring the individulas practicing them to justice for their crimes. There was a slight increase in awareness of this issue thanks to Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s documentry. This allowed pushed for the government of Pakistan to pass a bill punishing honour killings and caused for the man who shot his two sisters to

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