They were sisters, originally from Pakistan, but with Spanish residence and living in the city of Terrassa, 20 kilometres from Barcelona. Last Sunday, in the Punjab, near the border with India, police arrested six people for murdering them in Pakistan. The two sisters, Urooj Abbas, 21, and Anisa Abbas, 23, had gone to Pakistan to see their families, but there was more: they had been forced to marry two cousins on a previous visit, and now they wanted to renounce their marriages.
They wanted a divorce, but neither family agreed. In Pakistan, going back on such an agreement is a "disgrace" to the family, which can even end the lives of women who refuse the family arrangement. The consequence was a terrible crime of honour, with family members killing the two women in the area of Gujrat, in Pakistan's Pujab province..
Brothers, uncles, husbands and in-laws
According to Pakistani media, the women were invited by the family to visit the Gujrat area for a few days, but the girls rejected the plans and wanted to return to Catalonia, without the two husbands who had been imposed on them.
The two young women, Urooj and Anisa, were tortured and murdered, between Friday night and Saturday, with the alleged participation of one of the victim's brothers, an uncle, the two husbands, a cousin and the parents of the husbands. Police are looking for more people, also accused of participating in the murder of the two sisters from Terrassa.
Everyone looks the other way
Although the police have been able to arrest and charge the alleged perpetrators, these crimes are not the most frowned upon by the authorities in this country and often go unpunished or with very minor penalties, despite being murders. Every year in this country, about 1,000 women are killed by their families fo refusing to marry the man chosen by the family leaders for them, a fact that is very common in the poorest and most rural areas of Pakistan.
Residents of Terrassa
The two sisters killed in Pakistan, Urooj Abbas and Anisa Abbas, have been living in Catalonia for some time. The two lived in Terrassa, in the Vallès, where there is a very large Pakistani community, according to MónTerrassa. According to that Terrassa newspaper, the women's father asserts that they were tricked into returning to Pakistan by being told that their mother was ill.