Thread: Britain Cracks Down on Forced Marriages

Published Tuesday | March 11, 2008
Britain Cracks Down on Forced Marriages
By PAISLEY DODDS Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press

LONDON (AP) - Britain investigated 400 cases of forced marriages last year and is also looking into whether some girls who have vanished from school registers were taken out of schools to be married against their will, officials said Tuesday.

It is currently not against British law to force someone into marriage, but the practice often involves criminal offenses including abuse, assault, rape, kidnapping and murder.

The Forced Marriage Unit, comprised of six officers from the Foreign Office and Home Office, dealt with 400 reported cases last year. Of those, 168 occurred abroad. The majority of the cases overseas were in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India, the Foreign Office said.

The Commons Home Affairs Select Committee also said it has been investigating areas in Britain such as Bradford, where 33 youths - most of them girls - remain unaccounted for.

A new act takes effect this year that will allow judges more power to remove victims of abuses connected with forced marriage from households and issue protection orders. Family members who break the protection orders could be arrested.

The proposal is welcomed by 28-year-old Shazia Qayum, who said she was taken out of her school at 15 and later forced to marry a cousin.

"I don't think my parents would have taken me to Pakistan and forced me to marry my first cousin if it was a criminal offense in Britain, Qayum told The Associated Press.

Ann Cryer, a member of Parliament for Keighley in Yorkshire, has been speaking out against forced marriages for nine years. She said she is particularly concerned that the issue is not being addressed in schools and in Muslim areas.

"There's a problem in our northern towns and cities where all three parties are worried about losing the Muslim vote so people have avoided talking about it," Cryer told AP.

Figures from the Forced Marriage Unit show the highest incidence of reported cases is in Muslim communities. Britain is home to more than 1.8 million Muslims, the majority of whom are of Pakistani origin.

The Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim think tank, urged the community to condemn forced marriage.

"The ethnic minority community must speak up and condemn these sham marriages and not allow the silence to blind the whole community," said Mohammed Shafiq, the foundation's director.

Still, Nazia Khanum, who worked on a report funded by the Home Office that detailed numbers of reported cases, said forced marriage "has nothing to do with religion."

"It is a part of a patriarchal system where parents believe they know what is best," she said.

Qayum, whose family pulled her out of school at age 15, she says no authorities asked about her disappearance. A year later she found herself being forced on a family trip to Pakistan, where she was made to marry her first cousin.

"They made me feel like it was my duty," she said.

Qayum said she told immigration officials she had been forced into marriage, yet her Pakistani husband was still given a visa to come to Britain. She is now divorced and has no contact with her family.
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=1 ... d=10280737

Isn't integration with third-world peasants wonderful! I guess some customs are harder to let go of than others...