Three men in Kalar arrested for hanging their sister to death: police

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Three men were arrested on suspicion of hanging their sister to death, in what a local police spokesperson said on Sunday was related to a "social issue".

The body of the woman, born in 1994 and named by police only by the initials M.A.M, was found hanging in her own home on Friday evening in the district of Kalar, Garmiyan administration.

“The woman had problems with her husband, and their divorce case was in court,” Garmiyan Police spokesperson Jamal Qidoori told Rudaw.

The police forces arrested four suspects in the hours after the discovery of the woman's body – three of whom were her brothers, Qidoori said.

The three brothers confessed to having hanged their sister, and were taken into custody under the Iraqi Penal Code's Paragraph 406, which relates to murder.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani expressed his outrage over the murder via Twitter.

“We will not tolerate or accept violence against women in the name of honour — those responsible will pay a heavy price for their crime,” Talabani said on Sunday.

The deputy prime minister also expressed his gratitude to security forces for their arrest of the perpetrators.

The US Consul General has also spoken out on the killing. 

“I was appalled to read about the horrific killing of a woman in Kalar yesterday. We must say no to GBV. Such killings bring nothing but shame," said Consul General Rob Waller. 

"There should be no acceptance of such things in [the] IKR, which is rightly proud of its reputation for diversity/tolerance," he added. 

The term "social issue" is often used by Kurdistan Region authorities as a euphemism for the honor-based violence that persists the Kurdistan Region. In 2018, 49 women were murdered across the Kurdistan Region, according to figures from the General Directorate of Combating Violence Against Women, an office that works under the auspices of the Ministry of the Interior. It is not clear how many of the murders are honor-related.

According to the United Nations, 46 percent of married women in Iraq have survived some form of abuse at home, of which a third report physical and sexual assault.

Women in Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region, are facing "a heightened risk of domestic and gender-based violence” amid the coronavirus pandemic, Oxfam reported in June of this year.