The Patriot Post® · Who Will Speak for Yasmin?
In the wake of Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election, there have been reports of “hate crimes.” A number of them are real. Some, however, have been made up. But the aftermath of one such case is something we should not ignore.
Those who’ve committed crimes should be punished once it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. That’s a given. But those who falsely report crimes need to be punished, too. They not only injure those who are falsely accused, they hurt the real victims — who end up facing more skepticism than they should. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what goes through the mind of someone who makes such a false accusation.
The photos of Yasmin Seweid after she was arrested on charges of filing a false report, though, seem to make it a lot easier to guess what went through her mind. The New York Post reported that she had been dating a boy (who was Catholic), and that she had been out past her curfew, drinking. This is hardly unimaginable to anyone who’s even heard of a teenage girl.
Normally, going out past curfew and underage drinking is handled with something like grounding on the home front. Does it justify shaving a teenage girl’s head or having her be dragged publicly by her brother? What sort of sick people think that’s an acceptable way to treat any woman, much less their own daughter or sister? Such an incident sheds light on where Secretary of Defense-designate James Mattis was coming from when he said, “There are some a—holes in the world that just need to be shot.”
What those photos show, though, is nothing short of domestic assault. It’s abuse of a woman by her own family. Furthermore, this is the type of stuff that leads to honor killings. According to a 2014 Justice Department report, about two dozen such killings take place every year. But it isn’t just that, as we see in the case of Yasmin. How many other acts of violence are committed — yet justified in the name of protecting “honor”? We just don’t know for sure. In January 2016, the Gatestone Institute cited a study by the Population Reference Bureau stating that more than 500,000 women are either at risk of or have suffered female genital mutilation. Girls facing domestic violence, forced marriages, mutilation or worse sometimes run away, but all too often they’re taken back to the abusive homes they’ve fled.
“We don’t have the mechanisms in place here in the U.S. to take care of these girls,” Detective Chris Boughey of the Peoria Police Department said in 2012. “What do we do with a teenager runaway? Ninety-nine percent of the time, we take her home. But some of these girls end up getting killed.” Boughey should know — he investigated the honor killing of Noor Almaleki, a 20-year-old woman who was killed because she had rejected an arranged marriage and was dating another man.
According to the Phoenix New Times, here’s how Noor died: Her father drove a Jeep toward her at 30 miles per hour, plowing into her. Noor was dragged across a median, then left on the road, with numerous broken bones, and brain and spinal injuries that later proved fatal. Her boyfriend’s mother, who Noor was helping to navigate government bureaucracy, was thrown 27 feet with a broken pelvis and leg, among other injures.
RedState’s Mickey Walsh has sounded the alarm that Yasmin is, in all probability, a victim of this disgusting form of domestic violence. But just as people didn’t say anything about the terrorists who carried out the attacks in Orlando or San Bernardino for fear of being labeled Islamophobic, too many people stay silent about “honor violence,” including “honor killings,” for that same reason.
When President-elect Donald Trump called for “extreme vetting” that would include questioning potential immigrants about their views on honor killings, he was attacked by many of the same people who purport to stand up for women. But we hope Trump and his incoming attorney general, Jeff Sessions, will make this a priority.
Yasmin Seweid’s life — and others — may very well depend on it.