Government will tighten penalties for honor-related crimes

The government will propose a bill that would make it an aggravating circumstance if a law violation is motivated by honor.

This is what Immigration and Integration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek (S) told Berlingske.

- There should be no doubt that each individual freedom and civil rights are more important than the family's understanding of whether one is lovers or goes properly dressed, he says to the newspaper.

It is already a punishable aggravating circumstance if the motivation for a crime is related to the victim's ethnic origin, faith, or sexual orientation.

The new addition is that an honor-related motivation will also contribute to increasing the sentence, if it is up to the government.

The proposal from Kaare Dybvad Bek was also part of the Commission for the Forgotten Women's Campaign recommendations at the start of the year.

Danish courts have in the last 20 years convicted people for honor killings in two cases. That is, murders where the motivation for killing the victim was related to honor.

The first case was in 2005, where 18-year-old Ghazala Khan was shot and killed by her brother.

According to Kaare Dybvad Bek, there may be a hidden number. He builds on the number of women with minority backgrounds who are staying at crisis centers, he says to Berlingske.

However, he also believes that it is important to send a signal that honor-related crime is unacceptable, it sounds.

It is not the first time that the government has been inspired by the Commission for the Forgotten Women's proposals.

In May it was heard that the government was ready to find a model, so that people who have been subjected to honor-related violence and social control, in special cases can waive a case handler, if they are not comfortable with the person.

Also this proposal originated from the commission's report.

/ritzau/

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