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"On May 27, Farzana Parveen, a 25-year-old mother-to-be, was killed in broad daylight in front of a group of onlookers in the Pakistani city of Lahore. She had been on her way to court to defend her husband against an abduction case filed by her family&amp;amp;mdash;they did not approve of her marriage&amp;amp;mdash;when her father, brothers, and nearly 20 other relatives stoned her to death with bricks in the street. The case gained international attention at least partially because the murder took place in a very public space. A Pakistani court has indicted Parveen&amp;#x27;s father and four other men for murder and torture, according to CBS News. Farzana Parveen, in a photo held by her husband. So-called &amp;quot;honor killings&amp;quot; are not uncommon in rural parts of conservative Pakistan, where an estimated 1,000 women are murdered each year in this fashion. (Worldwide the number is 5,000, according to the International Honour Based Violence Resource Center), and arranged marriages are the norm. The killings usually come at the hand of the woman&amp;#x27;s father, brothers, or husband over allegedly bringing shame to the family for things like adultery or what could be considered indecent behavior. But this form of murder can also be a tool for a man to &amp;quot;rid&amp;quot; himself of an unwanted wife so he can remarry; Parveen&amp;#x27;s husband, Mohammad Iqbal, reportedly told CNN that he killed his first wife to make himself available to marry Parveen. Normally, not much is done to bring justice to victims of these murders. &amp;quot;The state has created an enabling environment for honor killings,&amp;quot; Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer and commentator, told The New York Times. &amp;quot;A woman being disciplined by her family is seen as a private matter by the police, the courts and the law.&amp;quot; Also, under Pakistani law, a convicted murderer can avoid punishment by obtaining forgiveness from the victim&amp;#x27;s family, often by paying &amp;quot;blood money.&amp;quot; And since many of the women killed are murdered by family members anyway, such incidents often go unpunished, even unnoticed. International attention to these horrific crimes is being raised by films like Honor Diaries, and the arrest of Parveen&amp;#x27;s murderers seems to be a small sign of change. We can only hope that actually bringing these men to justice will help deter others from committing similar acts against women."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2014/07/5-men-indicted-for-murdering-f>