A 26-year-oldTurkish woman by the name of Nevin Yildirim, awaits trial after walking the streets holding the hair of a mans head, proclaiming “Don’t talk behind my back, don’t play with my honor.” After being brought in, Nevin says that she shot and beheaded a man who had been raping her for 8 months while her husband was away for a seasonal job. She has two children and claims that the alleged rapist has gotten her pregnant with his child. The man threatened to kill her children if she said anything about what he was doing to her, and went so far as to sneaking into her home to take pictures of her pregnant body to exploit them to her culture if she said anything. One night she heard him crawling up the side of her home, and knew he was going to rape her once again, so she shot him three times, and then beheaded him to “cleanse and protect her honor.” She says that she went to a clinic after finding out she was pregnant and they would not abort the child because she was 14 weeks along, but later in court, the attorney and psychological behavioral analysis team are looking for a way to abort the baby to restore her mental health after she makes the statement, “I don’t want to keep the baby and am ready to die.”
Blogging on Human Rights, I find three issues with this case. One, does raping a woman for a total of eight months, although she has not come forward about it once, breach those rights? I do believe that rape breaches the right of the victim, but it seems odd to me that she would let it continue to happen for this long and not say anything, then go to this extreme, exploiting herself completely. I know that the Turkish government would have tracked this man down and penalized him for his actions without her having to take it to this extreme. Two, does gruesomely killing a man because he has raped you, breach his rights as a human? If you are acting out of self-defense, then no, his rights were obtained the second he inflicted harm upon her, but the fact that she waited so long, and did it before he even touched her, I believe does breach his rights as a human. I understand that he traumatized her mentally, but why continue letting him get away with doing this to you, when it could have been taken care of the very first time? Finally, should the unborn child be aborted and have to take consequence because of the actions of another person? I am a believer in the woman’s choice, especially to rape victims, but I also believe that if that child can hear and think and even see, then it is murder. It is not the child’s fault that it was conceived under terrible circumstances, and the child should be born and given to a family that would appreciate it, and not look down upon it, for something out of it’s control.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/world/europe/turkey-rape-beheading/index.html?hpt=wo_c2
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