Doski Azad; Victim of honor Killings
The body of Doski Azad, a 23-year-old Kurdish transgender woman, was found on January 31, 2022 in a village around the province of Duhok in the Kurdistan Region. The Duhok city police chief confirmed the death of the trans woman on January 31. Doski Azad was shot dead by her brother who fled and is on the run. Doski Azad recently revealed on social media that she is undergoing sex reassignment surgery, which could be the reason for his brother killing her.
The news of the trans woman’s murder was widely reported on social media. This is the second murder of transgender women by family members in the Kurdistan Region in the past year. Last year in Iran, Alireza Fazeli Monfared was killed in Ahvaz by his brother and cousin because he was gay.
According to IranWire, Pishko Zandi, a gender equality activist from Kurdistan, said: “Doski lived apart from her family and lived alone in the city of Duhok. Doski was a hairdresser and her fame was due to her profession. She also was very active on social media. Unfortunately, the news of her death is very sad and worrying. In conversations with some of her friends, I heard that her brother allegedly killed her in a very brutal manner and hung her body after killing her with a bullet. There were also sign of knife stabs on Doski ‘s body. Two days later, her family called the police and said that our son had committed suicide. This is while she identified herself as a trans woman. This shows that the family still has not accepted her true gender and has concealed this issue. “After the body was found, Doski ‘s other brother confessed that one of his brothers had come from Europe and killed her at gunpoint. He left Iraq and returned to Europe within two days of killing her.”
LGBT people are neither safe among their families nor supported by governments. Untruthful teachings based on honor, humiliation, and repression of the LGBT community by governments and education systems, and the lack of acceptance and understanding of homosexuals by the family and society, lead LGBT people to refrain from exposing their sexual orientation and gender identity.
The gender identity of people belonging to the LGBT community not only is not recognized by families, but also considered a “disgrace” to the family. Instead of understanding and accepting their child’s sexual orientation, they brutally remove them physically. Society plays a role in encouraging the family to commit these crimes. The more closed the society is and the more intense the ethnic, tribal and “honor-worshiping” culture are, the higher the rate of honor killings happens.
We call on all awakened consciences to take an effective step to end these killings by joining the Stop honor Killings Campaign.
Stop honor Killings Campaign
