100 GENDER PERSPECTIVES ON TORTURE: Law and Practice The Wider Implications of Shafilea Ahmed’s Case The ways in which the violence that Shafilea suffered within the confines of her own home, and which ultimately ended beside the River Kent in Sedgwick, Cumbria, offer a striking repre­ sentation of how Western nations point to domestic cases of crimes related to “honor” as being illustrative of a growing threat to dominant cultural norms and, by extension, maintaining security within society. Consequently, the discourse surrounding Shafilea’s murder supports Hellgren and Hobson’s (2008) contention that: honour killings are boundary-making arenas . . . intended to be public statements, to restore honour to a family . . . [but] are also public dramas re-enacted in the courts and media . . . arenas for boundary marking beyond the family and local community. (Hellgren and Hobson 2008: 386) Media coverage of Shafilea’s “honor killing,” and those involved in it, provides a convenient opportunity not only to make sweeping generalizations, drawn from the experience of a single Muslim Pakistani family, about the Muslim and South Asian migrant population, but also to underline the implications of their presence for the British nation. Shafilea’s death embodies a com­ plicated, symbolic battlefield for an entire discourse about national inclusion and exclusion. She becomes what Reimers identifies as the “other but with us.” (Gill, 2017: 161) Shafilea is “othered” as a victim to be saved by Western culture, while the act of claiming Shafilea as “Western” makes her a “worthy” victim. On a secondary level, Shafilea is also sacrificed for her family’s “honor,” thus her “Westernization” also makes her a martyr for the British nation, and the ideal migrant cit­ izen. We must not overlook, however, the extreme costs that such a positioning has upon the lives of Shafilea and women like her, as they vacillate between cultures within the discursive no-man’s land described in Anzaldúa’s (2007) concept of borderlands. Representations of honor killings that construct South Asian culture as the key causal factor are permeated with discursive strategies associated with moral panic. The perpetrators of these crimes are labeled “deviant,” with the problem of HBV seen as pervasive among such deviants—in this case, among all Muslims. Specific forms of domestic violence common in minority commu­ nities tend to be depicted as the norm in these “deviant” communities. Whereas “mainstream” forms of domestic violence are generally represented through rhetoric focused on the individuals involved, the majority of news stories about HBV employ framing devices centered on the cultural differences of perpetrators of this form of violence. As such, the media’s framing of honor killings contributes to the perception that culturally specific forms of violence are more abhorrent than “normal” domestic violence and that they are rightfully subject to media-driven moral crusades (Anitha and Gill 2011). Conclusion The police refused to call Shafilea’s murder an “honor killing” precisely because they wanted to stress that no license should be granted to those who claim that their cultural rights excuse acts of brutality, and in so doing marked a step in the right direction. At the same time, those charged with protecting the public must be able to identify and understand the risk factors associated with all forms of VAW in order to respond effectively. Such an understanding is only possible if, instead of talking purely about culture, debates about HBV and VAW explore the intersection of culture with gender and other axes of differentiation; the tackling of violence against females in society is not just a question of culture, but also one of equity. In sentencing Shafilea Ahmed’s parents to