On the run in Pakistan

Introduction: The woman on the right of this picture is a British subject being held against her will in Pakistan. It's sobering to think that she is just one of a thousand British women trapped there inside forced marriages. But the most surprising thing about this story is what the British High Commission is doing to help..
 

There is an air of expectancy among staff at the British High Commission in Islamabad. The "safe house" has been made ready, the flight booked, the operation to repatriate a British subject in fear of her life is ready to go. They know that Koheema, the girl they want to rescue, will arrive accompanied by family members who have no idea of the plan and will actively resist if they get a hint of it. Everyone is careful not to arouse suspicion. The deputy head of the consular section, Mark Kettle, casts a casual eye over the queue of people waiting in the fierce sun-fight, clutching their settlement application forms - the women with scarves pulled over their heads and both sexes wearing the traditional shalwar-kameez.

I had met Koheema by chance in the waiting room of the women's hospital in Mirpur, the area from which many Britons of Pakistani origin come. I knew that hundreds of young British girls are currently being held in the area against their will and I wanted to know whether there was anyone they could turn to for help. My translator knew a sympathetic woman doctor at the hospital who might be a start. There were two women sitting opposite us and the younger one was obviously listening in as we discussed our findings so far. She was becoming increasingly agitated.

Her mother left to find a toilet and the young woman leaned across, "Can I talk to you?" she asked. The story spilled out in breathless snatches, interrupted by nervous looks round for the returning mother. She told us how she had just finished a science degree at Bradford University, and had been tricked into coming to Pakistan to attend a cousin's wedding. Her parents had been nervous about her studying with English boys and girls and were afraid that she might "be led astray".

As soon as she got to Mirpur, however, she realised that the wedding being prepared by the extended family was in fact her own. She tried refusing to marry the cousin chosen for her but was physically beaten into submission. She was now expected to apply for the right to settle in the UK for the husband she loathed. "Do you want us to help you?" we asked. "Yes, please," she said. "What would happen if your parents knew that you were trying to escape?" "They would kill me," she replied.

I tipped off the staff at the High Commission and, by keeping contact with the girl through a third party, organised a day for her to turn up at the High Commission, allegedly to make a settlement application for her husband. Once he had her alone in a private interview room, Mark Kettle explained that they could get her immediately and safely out of Pakistan and then there would be one of the network of refuges in the UK for Asian women in her situation to choose from.

But she refused the offer. "I'm really grateful for all that you've tried to do," she told me later, apologetically, "but I've decided not to accept your help. I've run away before and they've always found me and beaten me. If only I had had somewhere to go to before they married me, I would have run away, but now it's too late. Now that I have been forcibly married, they'll never let go. It may, take two, three years, but they'll find me even in the UK and they'll kill me."

Mirpur is by far the richest region in an otherwise depressed area which spans the Punjab and Kashmir. Building contractors do a brisk trade in classical columns and there are more marble mansions per square acre here than anywhere else in rural Pakistan. They are built from the money sent back to the region by successful immigrants in the UK either for the benefit of parents and extended families left back home or as future retirement homes. Camels and herds of goats are driven down Mirpur high street and past a succession of smart-looking bank fronts, the Bank of Pakistan, the Islamic Bank and so on, all promising "swift foreign money transfers".

The accents among those queuing in the post office to make phone calls to the UK are West Yorkshire, and there is a branch of British Airways. The only thing missing is a Barclays.

No wonder every young man here dreams of marrying a girl from Bradford., And all too often his family is obliged to make the dream come true.

The first Mirpuris arrived in Britain en masse in the Sixties after the constructions of a dam on the Punjabi-Kashmir border flooded a huge swathe of agricultural surrounding the town of Mirpur. The first flights were paid for out of compensation received from the government. Now many families who clubbed together to buy those first air tickets are asking for' daughters back in return.

One Foreign Office official told me in confidence that there are probably more than 1,000 girls in situations like Koheema's, in transit between Pakistan and the UK at any one time. Officially, the figure is "in the hundreds". When I eventually found a human-rights activist in Mirpur who was trying to help the girls, he had several hundred names on his files who had contacted him in the Mirpur region alone, and he believes there were many more elsewhere id' Pakistan. "Why doesn't the British Government do something to help" After all, they gave these girls British passports and so they should help them. There should be some place here in Mirpur where they can turn for help."

So why doesn't the British High Commission have a presence in Mirpur, some kind of agency or even an honorary consul to whom these girls can turn? Mark Kettle explained that there was the problem of dual nationality. According to Pakistani law, a British girl of Pakistani origin is regarded as a Pakistani when in Pakistan. "We cannot go out and get her," he says. She has to get to the High Commission, to the patch of British soil, behind a barbed wire fence in the diplomatic enclave, in Islamabad before HMG can do anything to help. Joining the long queue of would-be immigrants and visitors outside the High Commission can be dangerous in itself, as two sisters from Bradford discovered last year Fleeing the prospect of forced marriages, they made the difficult journey from Mirpur to Islamabad only to find that the uncle who had threatened to kill them was waiting in the queue for them. He had got a guard at the High Commission to tell him when the girls turned up and he was armed. Eventually, after many narrow escapes, the girls were safely repatriated and the guard has since been fired.

But there are other tales of strange behaviour among High Commission staff. Nazish had caused her parents to worry when, at 17, she was discovered taking afternoons off her school in Leeds. To discipline her, her parents took her to Pakistan to "attend a cousin's wedding". She fell into the same trap as Koheema. "During the ceremony, my mother was holding onto one arm and my grandmother the other. They were hurting me and telling me that unless I went through with it, my grandfather, who had a weak heart, would die."

Nazish, 23, once dreamed of becoming a nurse. She cries as she tells the story of how instead she was forcibly married to a man who spoke no English, who was 30 years older than her and who sexually abused her. "He would watch pornographic movies in the morning and then come back at midday and rape me. It happened every day and it was always rape."

Her mother-in-law treated her little better. "She made me clean up after the animals - the goats and buffaloes. I had never even seen a buffalo before! I had to cook with pots and open fires. I would burn my hands and she would yell at me." Ironically, Nazish was at a family wedding when she took her chance and ran away. She telephoned the High Commission.

"When I was really scared and I needed some support, the first thing that came into my mind was to contact the High Commission. I was so relieved to hear a British voice on the end of the phone. The man asked if I was a British national and I said I was. He then said, 'But you are a Pakistani, you have a Pakistani name.' I said, 'Yes, but I have a British passport.' He said, 'Sorry, we can't help you,' and put the phone down. I went to pieces after, that." Nazish has been on the run for three years now. What would her family do if they found her? "They would almost certainly kill me."

When I relayed the story of the telephone call to the deputy consul, Mark Kettle looked embarrassed, as if the story was one he had heard on other occasions. "That should not have happened," he said, "and we shall look into it."

In the Foreign Office in London, the head of the consular department, James Watt, denied that this was another example of institutionalised racism among British civil servants. "Islamabad is one of the most difficult of posts for Foreign Office employees," he says, "we've had problems with the staff which we are trying to sort out and there is a real problem of underfunding."

The economics do not make sense. A little more time and attention paid at the High Commission could surely save hundreds of tragedies played out back in the UK. The majority of people queuing at the settlement application counter at the High Commission are unaccompanied men, applying to enter the UK. Their wives, who as British citizens are the sponsors, are not required to come in person to lodge the application. Why not? Immigration secretary Anna Pitt says that, "The rules say they don't have to, it would be expecting too much for some families to make the journey" Given that we now know that there are hundreds of unwilling brides out there who have been forced to sign application forms, would it not it be a good idea to insist? "Yes, I suppose it would be," she concedes lamely.

The West Yorkshire police say they deal with some 300 cases a year of women who ask for help to escape from marriages which they never wanted to enter in the first place -and the numbers are increasing. The force employs two full-time officers dealing with these cases alone.

Nazish's husband is working as a waiter in Leicester. Now that they are divorced, he is likely to re-marry. Thanks to the wife he abused, he is now a British citizen. Razia Sodegar, who runs One Voice in Bradford, which campaigns to protect Asian women from forced marriages, says that laws should be introduced to stop abusive husbands from using wives to gain entry to the UK.

Ms Sodegar, whose family is from Mirpur, has been invited to discuss the issue with Mike O'Brien, the Immigration minister. She will be asking him to provide safety nets for Asian girls both in the UK and back in Pakistan. In the UK, she wants all families who apply for visas for Pakistan to attend a marriage to be questioned. "Time and again, we are told that we are going to the wedding of a distant cousin, only to find that we are the intended and unwilling bride!" she says. And she wants the Government to consider some way by which wives who have returned to the UK with unwanted husbands can appeal for them to be sent back to Pakistan.

But most of all, she argues, a safety net should be provided in Pakistan, to stop these marriages in the first place. "It's disgusting," she says. "The British Government say they want to help these girls. They should start by opening some kind of Government presence in Mirpur to whom the girls can turn. After all, there's a British Airways there, why not a consulate?" It is already too late for Nazish and Koheema and hundreds of British Asian girls who are already married against their will. But it's not too late to help the many more who will be boarding flights to Pakistan in the future only to find themselves duped and forced into a union they don't want.

Some names have been changed to protect identities.

(Sue Lloyd Roberts' filmed report forced marriage can be seen tonight on 'Newsnight', BBC2 10.30pm)
 

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