* Not their real names.

JAILING THE INNOCENT TRANSCRIPT

It's hard to imagine, but there are women out there spending large slabs of their lives behind bars to avoid being killed by close relatives who believe they've brought shame on their families. These "honour killings", as they're known, are meted out for misdemeanours as small as spending a night away from home, and they occur in many societies around the world. In Jordan recently, Yaara Bou Melhem gained exclusive access to a group of women whose lives have been in tumult after being put behind bars literally for their own safety.

REPORTER: Yarra Bou Melhem

RITA (Translation): He told me it was out of his hands. He was under pressure from the tribe.

This woman was the victim of an attempted honour killing. Because her life is still in danger we can’t show her full face or give any other details which might reveal her to those who want her dead. We’ll call her by the pseudonym Rita.

RITA (Translation): When I entered that place, I was terrified, I was afraid. I never thought I would set foot in that place or meet the people there.

Under threat of death from her relatives, Rita was sent by government authorities to the only safe place they had available –jail. She’s spent more than a decade there


RITA (Translation): I got into that place and I felt like a bird locked up in a cage, suffocating and unable to fly around. It’s the same with a human being when locked up in a room within four walls. You can’t breathe the air. You can’t see anything.


Rita’s friend Sophia is another woman who’s been sent to prison for protection against people who want to kill her.


SOPHIA (Translation): For nothing, I had no case against me. It was just detention. It was detention for administrative reasons.


Sophia was in jail for more than ten years.

SOPHIA (Translation): I used to pray to God for help and I used to think... I used to convince myself that I was moving, but my feelings were numb, as if I didn’t exist.

RANA HUSSEINI, JOURNALIST: In my opinion if someone’s life is in danger it should be the person who threatens their life that should be locked up and not the other way around.

Journalist Rana Husseini first came across women being held in protective custody when she visited Jordan’s only women’s prison on another assignment. Until then little had been reported on the subject. Rana now writes scores of articles every year on honour killings – and the treatment of women under threat.


RANA HUSSEINI: I would say maybe 40 or 50. If you’re talking about murders and court verdicts. Sometimes features stories relating to laws or women in protective custody I would say 40 or 50 .


LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): The Women’s Correctional Centre was opened on 1 January 2002 under the auspices of His Majesty King Abdullah II.

Lieutenant Fatima Al Badareen runs the Jweidah prison. This is the same facility where Rita and Sophia have spent years in protective custody. Television cameras aren’t usually allowed to film here but she agrees to give me a rare glimpse inside.

LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): In the wing, on the third floor, the women had a restaurant, a gym and beds especially for them. But when they were here, they preferred to be with the rest of the inmates.

Lieutenant Al Badareen shows me one of the work rooms. Inmates are allocated daily tasks that range from embroidering to cooking.

LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): All this is their work. Everything here is.

REPORTER (Translation): Is this for sale?

LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): Of course. And the income goes to the Craft Box.


The prisoners who made these are nowhere to be seen. They’ve been cleared away to keep them from my camera. And government minders are monitoring where I go and what I see. But the Lieutenant insists the inmates like it here.


LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): They say “We’re at home here.” It’s like outside. They say so themselves. If you were allowed to meet the inmates, you’d hear it from them, these are not my words.


RITA (Translation): Whoever enters that place is lost. And whoever leaves it is born again. Whoever enters that place feels on the first day that she’s going to a funeral.


While Rita tries not to be bitter, the years in jail have clearly taken their toll.

RITA (Translation): There was no freedom. You’re locked up 24 hours a day. You have breakfast, lunch and dinner. They’d open the door for you to get it and then they’d lock you up.... I’m telling you, I thought I’d be there forever.

Sophia also found her time behind bars devastating.


SOPHIA (Translation): I felt dead, not alive. But I tried to convince myself that it was wrong to commit suicide and die. True, it wasn’t such a bad centre but it was still a prison. And there you lose everything. You don’t live just to eat and drink, do you? You don’t live just for that. When you’re locked up within four walls for long and you ask yourself why... There’s no answer.

This is Dr Saad Munaseer -- the governor of Amman. He is one of 12 governors in Jordan with the power to send women to prison without trial if he thinks they’re in danger because of family suspicions about their behaviour.

DR SAAD MUNASEER, GOVERNOR OF AMMAN, (Translation): In the case of pregnancy or if she’s caught with a man in her house, this is not permissible. The third instance is being absent from home, when she disappears from her house for a week. Well, if she disappears for no reason, she has no work, no job. “Where have you been?” When her parents question her, it turns out she was with bad people. Of course, this gives an indication to the parents that their daughter is a bad girl.


As many as 20 women are murdered by relatives annually, because they’re thought to have tainted the family’s honour. The lives of many more women are under threat. And it’s estimated that at least 40 Jordanians have spent long periods in jail for their own protection. It’s a practice that Amman’s Governor is uncomfortable discussing.

REPORTER (Translation): Why do you put the daughter in jail and not the family?

DR SAAD MUNASEER, (Translation): No. If there’s someone... We did, of course. Yes, I detained some family members who we felt might commit a crime. We detained them. They were detained. But as to why we detain her, she’s the one who committed the crime.

REPORTER (Translation): Is it a crime to do something immoral if you’re married? Is it a crime?

DR SAAD MUNASEER: It’s a crime in the law. Yeah it’s not like in Australia.


RANA HUSSEINI: We never heard that they locked up someone who threatened a woman with her life. If someone threatens a women’s life regardless of which family, of which tribe, of which class or social status this person needs to go to prison to learn that women are worth something. That their life is worth something.

Honour killings are still a very sensitive issue in Jordan. Rana’s been blacklisted from Jweidah jail.. after her many reports on the plight of women in protective custody.


RANA HUSSEINI: I have been denied access to the prison for the past four or five years. I have tried several times to go again but when they figured what I was doing and my activism my reward was to deny me access to go and meet with prisoners.

During my time at Jweidah jail I was repeatedly told the prison isn’t currently holding any women at risk.


REPORTER (Translation): Is there no one here at all?

LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): No. I’m certain. No.

But when I quiz Dr Saad I get a different answer. He tells me that he has personally put away 6 women at risk and he’s keen to fix the mix-up with Lieutenant Al Badereen.

DR SAAD MUNASEER, (Translation): Hello? How are you, Fatme? It’s Dr Saad. Listen, I have Yaara here.

Not realising she’s on speaker phone, the Lieutenant reveals why she didn’t tell me about the detained women in her prison.


LIEUTENANT FATIMA AL BADAREEN (Translation): They told me not to talk. I had no permission to say we have four who are at risk. I only say this to you. But I had instructions not to mention them because this will be broadcast and we don’t want it seen as a phenomenon. The governors are cautious and scared at times. But we have directions not to make statements. The General Security Director-General told me not to...


After the Governor takes the Lieutenant off speaker phone, she eventually admits she’s holding 12 women in protective custody. The Governor tells me that he’s planning to resolve some of those cases soon. But there’s a catch, they can only be released to a male guarantor. In fact, the Governor believes that in many cases the best way to protect a woman’s life, is to find her a husband.


DR SAAD MUNASEER, (Translation): They get detained and sometimes we bring the religious judge to the court and he writes the marriage contract in the governorate building and she is handed to her husband.

After her many years in prison, Sophia is still shunned by her community and hasn’t found a male guarantor to release her.


SOPHIA (Translation): Sometimes I start crying but won’t let anyone see me. I don’t like anyone to see me. Everyone’s hurt here, we’re all the same. I just cover my head and cry. How did this happen to me? Sometimes I feel my whole life has been wasted and I’ve achieved nothing. Nothing.

Sophia’s friend Rita is also mourning her lost years. Even though she’s still at risk of being killed by close male relatives, she’s desperate to return to the outside world.


RITA (Translation): I want to get out to live my life, to live it to the fullest. Whether I’m in danger or not, I want to live my life. I want to live my life outside, settle in my own home, open and close the door with my own hands.


Rita and Sophia’s cases are finally nearing resolution.

SOPHIA (Translation): Home economics and management. You have the sheet. What are the necessary items?
Bread. Yes, how much? Come on.

At this training course they are relearning how to live on the outside. In the last couple of years Jordan has been releasing detained women into the care of Mizan, a human rights law group that has been lobbying for change.


SOPHIA (Translation): How much is rent? 70 dinars. Not 70. You two are paying 35 each, and you’re paying 40. So let’s put the average rent at 40 dinars.

When the girls were first released we felt that what we had to do was to teach them about everyday living. The everyday chores were shared. So two handle the cooking, one does the dishwashing, another the cleaning, another waters the plants and tends the garden.


EVA ABU HALAWEH, MIZAN LAW GROUP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: Some of them they told me Eva you are crazy.

Eva Abu Halaweh is the head of MIZAN. She was told by Government officials she faced an impossible task in seeking to rehabilitate the women.

EVA ABU HALAWEH: Many refused to cooperate also with us because it’s a risk. But others they looked at this as courage not a risk, not crazy but they told me you are courage not crazy.

Mizan has reconciled many of the released women with their families. But for some, that hasn’t been possible.


EVA ABU HALAWEH: Because of long-stay they were in prison for 12 years, 14 years, 15 years. It was very long-stay and it was very difficult for their families to receive them again, but the families they prefer us to help their daughters. They asked us to keep them far from the family and from the tribe.

Mizan aims to resettle these women in other parts of the country where they’re not known. But everyone’s aware that their lives will still be in danger.

RANA HUSSEINI: There’s another problem. Jordan is a small country. Unfortunately the people here are very good at donating information. So you know somebody might spot the girl in the street and tell her family and they might come and kill her.


EVA ABU HALAWEH: Do you know why she’s in detention?

In a sign of progress, Eva now gets referrals from governors about other women at risk. Mizan mediates with the families to find a solution that doesn’t involve prison or death. Eva’s hopeful they’ll be able to permanently eradicate the practice of jailing women for their own safety.


EVA ABU HALAWEH: I think within one year maybe. IF we continue work on this project. IF all stakeholders show cooperation. If governors refer cases to us from the first minute or judge or anyone know about such cases, refer it to us from the first minute then we can do our best to protect this women from killing or from protective custody or from jail.


After spending most of their adult lives in jail Rita and Sophia are finally about to be resettled. They’re excited about starting their new lives, but the pain of their past will always hang over them.



RITA (Translation): To forget it or forget about it, it’s impossible I cannot. But I try to let go of everything I saw in my life at the other place, god has opened a new door for me. I’m going to live in a home. I’ll rent somewhere and live there, furnish it with everything that I dreamt of.

SOPHIA (Translation): Freedom means life if there is no freedom there is no life. This is what it’s like to me. After my experience I consider life to be freedom. If there’s no freedom there’s no life.




Reporter/Camera
YAARA BOU MELHEM



Editor
MICAH MCGOWN
NICK O’BRIEN



Producer
AARON THOMAS



Subtitling
DALIA MATAR
JOSEPH ABDO



Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN