A recent YouTube lurking of mine brought me to a string of true crime documentary viewing late at night. Among those documentaries, I was introduced to a heinous crime – honour killing. For those who don’t know, an honour killing is when a family member – usually a female – is murdered or assaulted by her own relatives as a result of bringing dishonour to her household.

As with all murders, you wonder about the motives behind the killer and what they were thinking in the days leading to the crime. In the case of honour killings, whole generations of families come to the defence of the perpetrator and in fact, will aid them in escaping from retribution.

Now you start to wonder about how the families surrounding the killer thinks, how they bond over the deaths of their own family members who were slaughtered in the name of honour. What’s more, those who intend to unravel the truth essentially put their own lives at risk as the killer’s networks run deep and no one is willing to give information, only threats.

If the victims, who were fully aware of the dangers around them and their own impending death, could not save their own lives, who can?