[sacw] UK fights forced Asian marriages

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
(South Asia Citizens Web)
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The Asian Age
August 5, 1999

UK fights forced Asian marriages
London: The Tony Blair
government has set up a committee to investigate and recommend ways of
ending the practice of "arranged" or forced marriages among Britons of
South Asian origin. Minister for race relations Mike O'Brien announced the
formation of the panel after learning of the scale of forced marriages
within the community. Many young Asian wom- en are forced to marry unknown
men from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh - who are often illiterate or
unemployed - under pressure from family and friends and often on the
pretext of caste, culture or religion. At least 1,000 young women in the
South Asian community are forced into "arranged marriages" each year.
Baroness Uddin, an Asian peer and the first Bangladesh-born woman to sit on
a local authority in Britain, has been appointed chairperson of the
committee, which will also include officials from other government
departments and representatives from voluntary organisations. Although
cases of domestic violence and crimes against women in the Asian community
have risen sharply in recent times the British government and social
organisations have, till now, side-stepped the issue, fearing accusations
of interference in the religious and cultural freedoms of ethnic minority
groups. Recently, a Sikh girl from Lon- don was sent by her parents to a
village in Punjab to be married against her wishes. She was brought back to
Britain following an extraordinary judicial initiative. A high court judge
ruled that parents who took their daughter abroad to marry them against
their will were guilty of child abduction. In northern England, where there
is a significant population of Pakistani origin and where the practice is
particularly widespread, the mother and brother of a young Muslim woman
were recently convicted for killing her following a pregnancy from an
affair while the husband she had been forced to marry was still in
Pakistan. "The Asian community has to be told that certain cultural
practices were no longer tolerable," stated Ms Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a
commentator on race relations. Women MPs have also demanded that the
British foreign office should put up notices in airports with helpline
phone numbers for British Asian girls being taken to the Indian
subcontinent to marry. The committee, however, is not expected to recommend
new laws. "This problem does not need legislation, yet. Kidnapping is
illegal and so is domestic violence," said a home office official.