Mick Hartley

At MSNBC, from the Washington Post (via ICAHK), a report on the work of the Forced Marriage Unit in Pakistan:

In Britain, girls of Pakistani descent, many of them first-generation British citizens, are raised in a Western country where women dress, date and marry as they please. Some rebel against the traditions of their parents' homeland, where liquor is banned, women cover their heads, and it is scandalous for unmarried women to talk to men who are not their relatives.

No culture or religion endorses forced marriages, but parents often see it as a way of defending their traditions. Marriage to a first cousin or someone from the family's home village is viewed as a way to preserve family honor, prevent marriage outside their religion and keep wealth within the family.

So parents bring their daughters to Pakistan, revealing their true intentions only after they arrive. By then, the girls are surrounded by family, with no place to turn and the threat of violence if they resist.

Before 2000, British officials tended to view forced marriages as a foreign custom not theirs to judge. But these British-raised young women are increasingly worldly and assertive, and many now have cellphones hidden in their burqas or handbags.

From even the remotest villages, they are increasingly calling for help. And the British government has set up a special group to rescue them.   […]

The teenage girl sat in Salimi's office, wearing a black niqab that covered everything but her sad brown eyes.

"I don't want to hide; I want to be free, open," she said in a pronounced Scottish accent. She said she usually wears jeans.

Lowering her niqab enough to reveal her long, dark hair and pretty earrings, she said she is scared of her family. Her brothers, she said, had already beaten up one of her friends because of her, and she believed they would kill her for shaming the family.

"My father would shoot me before letting me go," she said. "My parents say things are screwed up in the U.K., so they want me to marry a guy from here, who doesn't drink and smoke."

"My boyfriend is even a Muslim and from Pakistan, but they don't accept him," she continued. "I am British, but I am Pakistani, too. But why shouldn't I get to decide whom I marry?"

She looked tired, and she bent over several times complaining of stomach cramps. The pressure of recent days had been too much.

"I have left everyone, everything," she said. "I have not been a bad person to anyone. I don't know why this happened to me."

"Marriage to a first cousin or someone from the family's home village is viewed as a way to preserve family honor, prevent marriage outside their religion and keep wealth within the family." It also means that Bradford Royal Infirmary is now a centre of excellence for the treatment of recessive genetic illnesses, with the Pakistani community accounting for 30 per cent of all births with recessive disorders, despite representing 3.4 per cent of the birth rate nationwide.