To an outsider, it seems unbelievable – a teenage girl is beaten and locked in her room for having her hair cut, a six-year-old is killed in an arson attack because her brother had a girlfriend, a young woman is murdered and buried in a suitcase because she fell in love with the wrong man.
But these things have happened. What’s more, they have happened in Birmingham and similar atrocities are taking place in the city as this article is being read.
What connects the brutalities is they are all done in the name of “honour“.
Figures for honour-related violence are hard to come by as by its very nature it is hidden. But it is far from unusual. Birmingham’s Ashram Housing Association provides advice and accommodation for about 400 Asian women and children who have survived domestic violence every year.
Another Birmingham refuge, with space for nine Asian women and their children, turns at least one woman away daily because there is no room.
Honour, contrary to what those who perpetuate such crimes might claim, has nothing to do with religion. It relates to a particular form of social organisation, prevalent in villages in India and Pakistan and found in parts of East Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
The concept of honour is so powerful it is more important than the love of a child.
“Women are reared to believe they are better off dead than bringing shame on their families,” says Surwat Sohail, chair of the Asian Women’s Domestic Violence Forum in Birmingham.
So what is it about these communities that means honour is more important than a child’s happiness, or even life?
Jasvinder Sanghera, who fled a forced marriage and has set up Karma Nirvana, a charity for victims of forced marriage, domestic violence and honour killings, says it needs to be understood in the context of village life.
“My father came from a village in the Punjab,” she explains. “People from the village all shared the same surname and the same mentality.
“The surname tells who you are and where you come from in India. You are only somebody in relation to that family and name. That name is only something if it has status and a reputation.
“That reputation is upheld by the behaviour invested in children. If they behave a certain way, it is not just dishonourable to the mother and father but the whole family.”
Panjit (not her real name), who works at a Birmingham refuge for Asian women, confirms the village mentality does not abate just because a family has come to Britain.
A family can become even more entrenched as it experiences dislocation and hostility and clings more tightly to the bonds of kinship.
“There’s no doubt some families over here are about 20 years behind where they are in India,” she says. “In India and Pakistan they have moved on.”
In Britain, just a few months ago Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, men and women, between 16 and 34 were asked if they thought an honour killing could be justified. Shockingly, 10 per cent said yes.
“A question I have asked for almost all my life is, ‘how could a mother and father be so horrible to me?'” says Jasvinder.
“I understand it by thinking the only way my mother and father could remain in the community and have community acceptance, was through not accepting the decision I made to leave. That was the only way they still could save face.”
Perhaps this explains why the suicide rate of Asian women aged 16 to 24 is three times the national average.
It is women that suffer these atrocities rather than men because another feature of the clan social structure is that it is patriarchal.
In marriage women are not seen as equal partners. Marriage is a means of developing kinship networks, strengthening family links, honour long-standing family commitments or ensuring land remains within a family.
“Girls are treated differently from the time they are born,” says Jasvinder. “A birth is only celebrated if it is a boy – a sweet is given – but not if it’s a girl.
“It goes back to the dowry, that is still practised. People say it isn’t, but it is.
“If you have a daughter she is a financial burden because you have to provide a dowry for her to get married, and these families are quite poor.
“That’s why in India there are higher rates of female infanticide than male and what happens in India impacts on what happens in England.”
In this context it is easy to see how women and girls feel they have no choice but to marry the man chosen by a family.
And when a woman feels she has no choice but to marry, the marriage is not an arranged one, but a forced one as she has not consented to it.
Women are sometimes blackmailed, beaten, locked into their rooms, and even threatened with death because of the shame it would bring on the family if they refused.
It is not just adults who are forced into marriage. The Forced Marriage Unit, set up three years ago by the Home Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as a one-stop shop for dealing with the prevention of forced marriages, reports that 30 per cent of the girls it helps are minors, some as young as ten.
“When you marry you become somebody’s property,” says Jasvinder. “When men are forced to marry they are told then can go abroad to India or Pakistan, get married and then come back to England and their life doesn’t have to change. They can still have girlfriends and do what they like.
“When a girl gets married, she has to leave her family home completely and and live in her mother-in-law’s house.
She becomes the daughter-in-law to the family and becomes the family property. Women are taught to serve men. The mother-in-law of my second husband said he was a god and I had to treat him like a god.”
Inevitably such behaviour becomes internalised – men start to believe they really are superior to women and women start to think they deserve to be abused.
“That is why there is violence against women,” says Jasvinder. “Men think they have an automatic right to perpetuate the abuse.
“It is acceptable to be violent. The women internalise it as being acceptable.”
Parnjit says that when women arrive at the refuge they invariably feel that they are to blame for what has happened to them.
Girls and young women have very few options. It is either suicide or running away, but the cost of running away is huge.
There is an enormous stigma about refuges, such that some of the professional women who work there have not told their families that is what they do.
Jasvinder has had more than 20 death threats, some from within her family, because of the work she has done providing support and raising awareness of domestic violence in the Asian community.
“Some people say refuges should be closed down because then women would be happy in their marriages,” says Parnjit.
“The stigma is so great, that the road to a refuge is a one-way street. Once you come here, there is no way you can go back. That’s why it is so difficult for women to come.”
Furthermore, many of the young women have been brought up in such a controlling environment, that they are not well equipped to deal with the world outside the family home.
“You are taught how to live your life as a young Asian girl from a very young age – what you can do against what you can’t do,” says Jasvinder.
“You don’t cut your hair, you know that from the age of eight or nine. Then the rules of engagement change. Don’t talk to people outside the family. Don’t have a boyfriend. Don’t dress in a way that can attract attention. In the gurdwaras, don’t speak unless you are spoken to. You are conditioned into this.”
So as well as the practical difficulties of escaping, it is very difficult for girls to do something that goes against all their conditioning.
And if they do run, they are running into a devastating isolation. Jasvinder was by no means unusual in being treated as though she was dead by her family.
Typically, they experience enormous grief at exchanging everything they have known for their freedom.
“No matter how horrific what they have done is, they have this idealised notion of the family they miss and live in hope of some sort of reconciliation,” says Jasvinder. “They internalise guilt and feel bad they have just gone across the family and so they underplay abuse.
“The grief is so great they just want to be held, but there comes a point, when the healing process starts when they need to let go of the expectation that they will have a mother and father.
“Only when we start the process of doing that, can they engage with the truth of what happened and stop making excuses for their family’s behaviour.”
Clearly, these young women need help. Arguably Birmingham is leading the way in its handling of forced marriage, honour killings and domestic violence.
The city has an inter-agency domestic violence forum which brings all the relevant agencies together.
One of its three refuges specifically for Asian women was founded 28 years ago. Ashram Housing Association has been providing services for Asian women for the past 12 years and won two awards for its work.
In many parts of the country there is still an inadequate response by the police to forced marriage.
Part of the problem is that to people unfamiliar with honour and the family structure that underpins in, the claims of the women can sound far-fetched: “My father is going to murder me because I’ve got a boyfriend.”
Jasvinder says: “One of the things I notice is the lack of confidence from police officers who really genuinely want to do the right thing.
“There are so many well intentioned police officers who worry about it being about one’s culture or being called a racist that they therefore don’t engage.
“That’s creating a massive problem. We haven’t done ourselves any favours by creating a culture of sensitivity when it detracts from an individual being involved in criminal activity.”
But both Surwat and Parnjit, working with women survivors in Birmingham on a daily basis, say West Midlands police are pretty clued up.
“The police have come a long way even in the past couple of years,” says Surwat. “You do get the odd cases where there are problems, but you can’t link that to an overall lack of knowledge.”
Likewise, in some parts of the country there are difficulties with schools. Jasvinder has come across teachers who refuse to put a poster advertising the Forced Marriage Unit on their noticeboard because they “don’t want to upset communities.“
She says that every summer there will be children, some aged as young as eight, who go missing over the holidays. The question should be asked “where have they gone?” and yet it isn’t.
“We’re on a very long road. It’s an uphill struggle. I’m not very optimistic, because we’ve got such a long way to go,” she says.
But in Birmingham schools actually contact Ashram and invite them to come in and run workshops for them.
The housing association runs training programmes for the Crown Prosecution Service, probation services, Age Concern, Muslim Women’s Network, Hindu Women’s Network, Sikh Nari Group and Surestart and run stalls to raise awareness at community events like Handsworth Mela, Birmingham Eid Mela, Mega Mela.
“Ashram has the respect of the community because we have been working with them for so many years,” says Surwat.
“We don’t just deal with domestic violence. We have housing schemes for Asian elders and mental health schemes where women from black and minority ethnic communities can be accommodated.
“We go to the heart of the communities and engage them in their aspirations for future housing so Ashram is seen in a very positive light. That means we can then go in and talk about sensitive issues.”
Other pioneering work has been done by Parnjit’s refuge. It has researched the role of midwives and health visitors in identifying domestic violence and noticed that they were not picking up on some of the signals.
“If the husband is with the wife on the visits and will not let her speak, saying she does not speak English, that might mean she is experiencing domestic violence,” says Parnjit.
“Or the mother-in-law might be there, making sure the woman does not say anything. Midwives were missing these kind of signals.”
It is not just a matter of dealing with the crisis, but supporting the survivors.
In Birmingham there are empowerment programmes for women, offering classes in confidence building, self-defence and aromatherapy.
They encourage women to take up hobbies, finding the things that make them feel good about themselves.
Jasvinder has set up a Friendship Network which puts women who are survivors in touch with each other and with women at risk, so they can talk to people in the same situation.
One of Ashram’s awards was for its services to women who have survived domestic violence and are setting up homes for themselves.
The housing association is looking at ways of reaching women who have very little contact with the world outside their houses through doing radio campaigns and providing information in doctor’s surgeries and maternity units.
But there is no room for complacency. Earlier this year a Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act went through Parliament and will come into force by the end of the year.
The Act enables people to apply for an injunction at the county courts, rather than just the high courts. It also enables third parties to apply for an injunction on behalf of somebody else.
Jasvinder is not satisfied with it because it deals with forced marriage as a civil rather than criminal matter.
“I think there should be a specific offence of forced marriage,” she says. “It should be a stand alone offence. It’s an offence to abduct someone, to kidnap or harass her, but it’s not an offence to force someone into marriage. I think it should be, just as rape is a stand alone offence. The UK Government considered making it a criminal offence but didn’t for fear of demonising the community.“
Source
The parents of a teenager murdered her because she failed to conform to their wishes for an arranged marriage and she allegedly “brought shame” on the family, a court has heard.
The UK Enrichment News 