Author: Shyam Bhatia in London
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: January 27, 2004
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jan/27uk.htm
Teenage Muslim girls in the United
Kingdom are being abducted in droves from their homes and sent to Pakistan
for forced marriages, a left wing member of parliament has alleged.
"I've been told 300 girls disappear
every year from schools in the Bradford district. They are pressured by
their parents to marry in Pakistan. They don't really have a choice. They
often fear defying their families and dare not say no," says Labour MP
Ann Cryer, who represents the Keighley constituency.
She wants the practice to be stopped
immediately. Bradford is home to thousands of families who trace their
origins to Bangladesh and the Mirpur district of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Some parents reportedly sent their
daughters to Pakistan at a young age to 'protect' them from the corrupting
influences of Western culture. In such cases, the girls stay with relatives
until they are married off and return home to the UK, usually at the age
of 18, with dimmed possibilities of completing their education.
They seek out unskilled jobs paying
around £400-450 per month and sponsor visa applications for their
newly married husbands to join them in the UK.
At the same time, she claims, it
is a lucrative business with some families receiving as much as £10,000
in exchange for each daughter that is married off.
Recently back from a trip to Pakistan
along with fellow MP Terry Rooney, who represents the Bradford North constituency,
she has disclosed her findings in letters to UK Home Secretary David Blunkett,
Solicitor General Harriet Harman and Children's Minister Margaret Hodge.
On an average, they claim, at least
two girls contact them every week expressing fears about being taken out
of the UK to be forcibly married.
They cite the case of a girl who
was sent to Bangladesh at the age of 12 and was married off at the age
of 14. She returned to the UK at the age of 16 with a kid in tow.
"More and more girls born in Bradford
are reaching the age when they are seen as a highly-prized commodity. It
is a scandal.
"Part of the tragedy is that it
is self-defeating for the Asian community. If you look at it simply from
the point of view of social and economic achievement, this practice is
holding them back.
"By abandoning their daughters'
education, they are destroying the chance of young Asian girls going to
college and university and getting good jobs where they can make a difference,"
says Cryer.
Existing legislation against false
imprisonment, threats, harassment or assault can be used to prevent forced
marriages, but Cryer thinks new laws are needed.
"A new law may not stop the problem
but it is worth trying," she says. "Parents will also realise what they
are doing is not only un-Islamic but against the law of the country."
She is supported by the president
of the Bradford Council of Mosques, Sher Azam, who says forced marriages
are illegal in India and Pakistan.
"Choosing who you marry is a basic
human right of an individual, male or female.
"Children should be allowed to enjoy
their childhood. If there are so many leaving their schools it is very
sad and Mrs Cryer is doing the right thing. No faith or religion condones
it and it must be stopped."
In London, Home Office officials
say they are trying to raise awareness about forced marriages with better
use of existing laws to stop the practice. "We are determined to put an
end to it," one official said.