Toronto Sun Article: Aqsa Parvez Murdered Because She Wanted To Fit Into Canadian Culture.

Murdered teen just wanted to fit in

Father, brother admit to killing Aqsa Parvez to defend family honour

By MICHELE MANDEL, Toronto Sun

Last Updated: June 15, 2010 8:49pm

Aqsa Parvez was murdered in 2007. Her father and brother pleaded guilty Tuesday.

BRAMPTON — For daring to be free, beautiful Aqsa Parvez was sacrificed on the altar of family honour.

In pleading guilty to that “chilling and antiquated patriarchal” crime of honour killing, her father, Muhammad Parvez, 60, and brother Waqsa, 29, will be sentenced to mandatory life terms in prison for second-degree murder.

“I deeply regret my actions,” her brother told Justice Bruce Durno while his distraught mother, wife and two brothers looked on.

“Aqsa Parvez’s murder was a gender-based crime, motivated by patriarchal concepts of honour and shame which these defendants had chosen to adopt,” Crown attorney Mara Basso said Tuesday in asking that the men not be allowed to apply for parole for 18 years.

“This is all about the honour of the males in the family. Embarrassment to the family is enough to warrant murder.”

And what had the rebellious 16-year-old done to raise their ire and “require” that she be lured back home and choked to death in her own bedroom that December 10, 2007?

She wanted to be an ordinary girl. She wanted to go to movies and wear makeup and have a part-time job and go out with her friends.

Instead, Aqsa was already promised in an arranged marriage to someone in Pakistan, spied on at school to ensure she was wearing her hijab and ordered to conform to the male rules in her strict Muslim household.

And so she ran away.

For that crime of ultimate humiliation, her father and brother decided she must die — and none of her many family members at home at the time lifted a finger to save her.

Such was the short, tragic life of a teen caught between two cultures, a girl murdered simply because she yearned to fit in with her new country.

The elder Parvez came to Canada as a refugee from Pakistan in 1999 and eventually brought his wife and eight children. Aqsa was the youngest and just 11 when she arrived.

According to an agreed statement of facts read by Crown attorney Sandra Caponecchia, the Grade 11 Applewood High School student was so upset about her lack of freedom and need to wear her hijab that she ran away for the first time in the fall of 2007.

With help from her school counsellor, she stayed at a shelter for three days before her family persuaded her to come home with promises she could wear more western clothing.

She told friends that her dad swore on the Koran that he’d kill her if she ran away again. He would live up to his promise.

About 10 days before her murder, Aqsa left home for the second time and moved in with a friend’s family. While her father and siblings begged her to return, she refused.

At about 7:20 a.m. on Dec. 10, her brother Waqsa picked her up in the family van. Just over 30 minutes later, her father called 911 and said he “killed his daughter.”

Police found her fully clothed in her basement bedroom. An autopsy determined she’d died from “neck compressions.” She tried to fight for her life — her brother’s DNA was found under her fingernails — but her family members insisted they’d heard nothing and that Waqsa had not been home at the time.

In a chilling exchange with a police interviewer, Aqsa’s mother, Anwar Jan, accepted what her husband had done.

“Why did you kill her?” she recalled asking him. “He said, ‘This is my insult. My community will say you have not been able to control your daughter. This is my insult. She is making me naked.’ ”

She refused to criticize her daughter’s murder. “I cannot say anything. Whatever he thinks, he knows about it.”

Caught on video when left alone, she wailed that she’d thought he would only “break legs and arms” but instead “killed her straight away.”

“Oh my Aqsa,” she could be heard saying. “Everyone begged you, but you did not listen … this would not have happened if you would have listened.”

Like their mother, the rest of the family seemed to believe Aqsa got what was coming to her.

Her sister, Shasma, told police Aqsa had disrespected her father, and her killers shouldn’t go to jail. Her brother, Atishan, who was in court, said if it had been his daughter, he just would have broken her legs.

A few days before the murder, court heard Waqsa asked a fellow tow truck driver if he could get him a gun. He said he intended to kill his sister but his father would take the blame because she was “causing the family embarrassment and he had to do it.”

Dressed in a white hijab and black cloak, Aqsa’s mother broke down sobbing during a break and repeatedly dabbed at her eyes. But her distress seemed reserved only for her husband and son.

In an “appeal for pity” she begged the judge for mercy and quickly glossed over Aqsa’s brutal murder.

“I am still missing my late daughter,” she wrote. “However she has been died (sic) since three years and will never come back again.”

Her tears now were reserved for her son and husband. “I appeal to your great court to be mercy on my son and husband and reduce their punishment.”

It would be touching — if she had ever thought to make the same cry for mercy to save her own daughter.

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