San Marco, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In early February 2023 a 22-year-old Iraqi YouTube star, Tiba Al-Ali was strangled by her father in an “honor killing,” part of the quotidian violence the nation has endured over the last two decades. In November 2023 Giulia Cecchettin, a 22-year-old engineering student from the Venice region in Italy, was found at the bottom of a ravine, killed by ex-boyfriend Filippo Turetta. Her body was discovered a week before November 25, the International Day Against Gender Violence. As 2023 came to close, she was the 83rd victim of femicide, in Italy.
Both were 22-year-olds. Their deaths in 2023 serve as a reminder on International Women’s Day that the tragedies of femicide and gender-based violence (GBV) will continue into 2024. “Honor killings” need to be recognized as problems that are not only confined to the global south and developing world.
While governments often react to direct violence, this problem will not end unless both state and society recognize endemic structural and cultural violence that enable femicide. The failure to act on these problems becomes a form of “necropolitics,” where the states allow women to succumb to the fate of femicide.
Direct Violence
Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung’s Triangle of Violence begins with “direct violence,” which often gets the most attention.
The father of Tiba Al-Ali projected direct violence against his daughter by strangling her. The last thing Tiba saw was the eyes of her father before she died.
Turetta projected direct violence against Giulia, a video camera capturing him beating her, and then later stabbing her 20 times to the neck and head. The last thing Giulia saw was the eyes of her ex-partner.
Tiba chose to defy her father. Giulia chose to leave Filippo and she was graduating before him, which he could not accept.
Structural Violence
Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe defines “necropolitics” as how political actors allow certain demographics to die. When states fail to prevent femicide that is a form of necropolitics, or what Galtung would call “structural violence.”
Ali’s murder is part of the rise of GBV due to a revival of tribal culture that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein encouraged after the 1991 Gulf War to maintain domestic order, as his security forces were diminished. Iraq’s gendered insecurity continued unabated as the security sector collapsed after the 2003 invasion. The US touted post-Saddam Iraq as a model state that would inspire a wave of democratization in the region. Yet Articles 41 and 409 of the Iraqi Penal Code, to this day, permits males to “punish” female members of a household. Those codes are a form of structural violence and necropolitics, enabling “honor killings.” It allows “practices of patriarchy” at the state level.
Women’s rights in Iraq • FRANCE 24 English Video
Structural violence and state patriarchy is evident by the security sector failing to address this issue, as the police allegedly knew beforehand that Al-Ali’s life was at risk and failed to take action.
Let us turn to Europe. Surprisingly, the Italian state engages in necropolitics by not legally recognizing “femicide” as a separate crime. Cecchettin’s sister, Elena, referred to this problem when said, “Femicide is a murder committed by the state because the state doesn’t protect us.” The state’s failure in this case to prevent direct violence is itself a form of violence. In the absence of the state Elena refers to the need for Italian civil society and NGOs to step in: “We need to fund anti-violence centres and give the possibility to those who need to ask for help.”
After the murder, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she would increase funds to women’s shelters and anti-violence centers. However, Meloni was also part of the problem, since her misogynistic right-wing politics and “Brothers of Italy”(Fratelli d’Italia) party enabled gendered cultural violence in Italy.
Cultural Violence
After the murder in Iraq, a twitter user, Ali Bey, wrote that women should “behave or face the same fate as Tiba Al-Ali,” along with a series of other voices in the Iraqi cybersphere condoning, if not celebrating the murder. These outbursts are examples of cultural violence or societal patriarchy that enables such crimes.
Elena links the murder of her younger sister to the patriarchal culture of violence that pervades Italy, a form of cultural necropolitics, which normalises the toxic behaviour of men like Turetta and eventually commits femicide. She said “Turetta is often described as a monster, but he’s not a monster.” She then addresses cultural elements: “A monster is an exception, a person who’s outside society, a person for whom society doesn’t need to take responsibility. But there’s a responsibility. Monsters aren’t sick, they’re healthy sons of the patriarchy and rape culture.”
Meloni promised promised a new educational campaign in schools to eradicate “the toxic culture of violence” in the country. While Meloni had condemned sexual violence in the past, it was usually when a migrant committed GBV, to support the anti-immigrant politics of her party.
In 2023 I conducted two digital autopsies on Tiba’s YouTube account and Giulia’s Instagram account. Both were beautiful souls that made the earth a better place. Tiba’s vibrant videos described her new life in Istanbul, to pursue her education. Guilia loved her mom, had a collection of beer bottle tops, and apparently had a fear of going to the hospital alone, but overcame her fear. That fear apparently had to do with the fact that she was taking care of her mom who eventually died of cancer.
The triangle of violence and necropolitics offers a nuanced means of analyzing the agents of patriarchy. But a simple linguistic exercise can also achieve this goal, using patriarchy as a verb instead of an abstract noun. We must each ask ourselves “Who or what has patriarched me or others in the past, present, and future?” and “Who or what have I patriarched?” Difficult questions, yes, but by bringing them into focus we can begin to identify the active agents and institutions that have patriarched and continue to patriarch in Iraq, Italy and the world. On this International Women’s Day, Iraq and Italy have failed to ensure gendered security.
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