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June 8, 2006
Special Report: Muslim Forced Marriages In Europe
We discussed the issue of Muslim honor killings on May 28 and attempted to explain how honor killings, forced marriages and arranged marriages were all parts of the same problem, the result of a notion among many Muslim families that girls are chattels which can be bartered. Pakistani commentators have tried to explain that honor killings are related to localised tribal customs, and have nothing to do with Islam. Yet honor killings happen in the Middle East, in Jordan and Palestine, in Turkey and among Kurdish communities. Where honor killings happen, there is almost invariably a culture in which arranged or forced marriages are considered traditional and acceptable. According to UN studies, about 1 million people are forced into marriages around the world.
HOLLAND
Today, Expatica reports that in Holland, the minister for Immigration and Integration, Rita Verdonk (pictured), was told by an advisory committee of the details of its commissioned report. This report states that forced marriage occurs frequently in the Netherlands.
The report described such marriages as a serious breach of the integrity of the victim. It concluded that forced marriage did not happen on its own - it was part of a broader pattern which included domestic violence, honour-related attacks, and the abandonment of women in their country of origin.
The report advised that victims should be assigned a case-manager who would ensure they received the appropriate assistance. late last year, the advisory commission made similar findings, but has bow expanded and amplified upon its previous conclusions.
The report advises that the Dutch government's advisory body on domestic violence should act as a coordinator for handling and dealing with cases of forced marriages. Currently, various ministries were assigned with dealing with cases of such marriage, and their actions did not constitute a unified approach.
BELGIUM
In November 2004, Robert Spencer reported in Dhimmiwatch that a Belgian senator of Moroccan origin, Mimount Bousakla, was forced to go into hiding, after receiving death threats. Her crime had been to criticize forced marriages, at a meeting held by the Council of Europe on this subject.
A recent report by the Council of Europe on the subject of forced marriages can be downloaded in pdf format HERE.
We reported on March 10 that Belgium's parliament decided to approve a proposal by the Justice Minister to ban forced marriages. So far, the law has not been fully mplemented onto the statute books, it appears, but Belgium will become the first country within the European Union to make forced marriages illegal. Currently, the only country in the world to have outlawed such unions is Norway, which is not within the EU.
In Belgium, the Muslim demographic where forced marriages occur is comprised of Moroccans and Turks. In 1999 a survey found that among women from these categories who were 40 or above, 27% had been forced to marry partners chosen for them.
The same survey found that among Turkish young women, aged 17 to 24, 13% had been compelled into such a marriage. Among Moroccan girls of the same age, 8% were victims of forced marriage.
Another study in Francophone education establishments from December 2003 to June 2004, among a base of 1,200 respondents aged 15 to 18 revealed the following results: 73.4% of those questioned said forced marriages were still being practiced, and 23% claimed to have personally come into contact with the custom.
When Belgium's prohibition becomes enshrined in law, those actually proved to have forced a marriage can receive a jail term from one month to two years, or maximum fine of between 500 and 2,500 Euros (equivalent to $596 and $2,978 US).
At present, if a marriage has been forced, only one of the partners can apply to have the marriage annulled. If a marriage has been made under threats, such a recourse opens a spouse to the same threats which brought the marriage into existence.
The new proposal will allow public prosecutors and courts to annul such a marriage, without either marriage partner making an application for dissolution of the marriage.
TURKEY
We stated that in Turkey, which is attempting to accede to the European Union, honor killings are frequent, and previously a murder who killed "for honour" could plead in a trial "extenuating" circumstances, and receive a lighter sentence. Complying with the necessary conditions of acceptance within Europe, the mitigating factors of honor killings were removed in summer 2004, Consequently, an individual sentenced for such a crime would be treated as a murderer, rather than a champion of Islamic "honor", and would receive a longer sentence.
As a result, it appeared that girls were being forced to commit their own honor-killings, by committing suicide. This year, girls and young women have been killing themselves in record numbers, mostly in the Eastern, more "traditionalist" pars of the country. In Van city, 20 women have committed suicide this year, more than happened in the entire year of 2005. in the Kurdish city of Batman, 10 women and girls under the age of 23 have committed suicide.
Women's rights activists claimed that these incidents were connected with the increased penalties for honor killings. We stated that on 24 May, Yakin Erturk, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, went to Batman, to investigate the curious spate of suicides. The BBC reported at the time that she was scheduled to visit four cities in eastern Turkey.
On June 2, AKI reported that as a result of her 10 day mission, she had reached a conclusion. She said that traditional practices, including forced marriages and also domestic violence, played a key role in the heightened number of female suicides.
"The majority of women in the provinces visited live lives that are not their own but are instead determined by a patriarchal normative order that draws its strength from reference to tradition, culture and tribal affiliation and often articulates itself on the basis of distorted notions of honour," she said.
"Diverse forms of violence are deliberately used against women who are seen to transgress this order. Suicides of women in the region occur within such a context."
Mosques in Turkey have recently been instructed to preach against honour killings, and the Turkish government has had campaigns to prevent domestic violence. Erturk acknowledged Turkey's commitment to equal legislation for women.
"In practice, however, I have found that authorities too often lack the willingness to implement these laws and protect women from violence. Interlocutors in the region explained that politicians and administrators are often inclined to arrange themselves with local power structures and norms at the expense of women's rights," she said.
"I have found that the patriarchal order and the human rights violations that go along with it - for example, forced and early marriages, domestic violence, and denial of reproductive rights - are often key contributing factors."
The situation of honor killings in Turkey is hard to remove from a culture where it has been practiced since time immemorial. We reported in October of a survey conducted by a Turkish university in Diyabakir in the southeast of the country. Most of the 430 individuals polled were men. When asked what the appropriate punishment should be for a woman committing adultery, 37% of respondents answered that she should be killed. 25% thought that she deserved to be divorced, and 21% replied that her nose or ears should be amputated.
In December a delegation of Turkish MPs visited Diyabakir to investigate honour killings. They visited families where honor killings had taken place, and also visited prisons to talk to perpetrators of such acts. 60 people a year in Turkey are said to be killed in honor killings, but the true figure could be much higher. A March survey of Turkish national attitudes found the majority of the population were still in favour of "traditionalist" values.
So is the same cultural conditioning which leads to honor killings really connected to forced marriages? Many Muslims are now living in Europe and there seems to be evidence to support this trend within Western nations.
GERMANY
The majority of the 3.4 million Muslims living in Germany are of Turkish origin. We reported on April 13 we reported on the trial of a young man, who when only 18, had shot his 23-year old sister, Hatun Surucu (pictured) in broad daylight. Two brothers were also charged, but were not convicted. The prosecution had argued that the elder brothers had supplied Ayhan Surucu with the gun, as he would receive a lesser sentence. Adnan was sentenced to nine years and three months' jail.
At the verdict of acquittal for the brothers, there were cheers in the courtroom. Following the trial, the family announced it would hold a party. The Turkish/Kurdish family were photographed strolling in a Berlin park, smiling and cheerful.
Hatun had been sent to Turkey for a forced marriage when she had only been 15 years old, made to marry a cousin in their "home" region of southeastern Turkey. She had fled Turkey aged 17, pregnant. She was killed because she had chosen to "live like a German". At the time of her killing, Muslim pupils from a local school demonstrated publicly, applauding Hatun's murder.
As we reported at the time, drawing on a report from in Der Spiegel: Between June and September 2005, there had been six Muslim women living in Berlin murdered by their relatives in honor killings. One was Hatun. Of the others, two of them were stabbed to death in front of their young children, one was shot, one was strangled to death and a fifth was drowned.
The Turkish women's organization Papatya has documented 40 instances of honor killings in Germany since 1996. In one case from April 2004, a girl in Darmstadt had been clubbed to death with a hockey stick by her two brothers. They had found out that she had slept with a boyfriend.
In December 2003 in Tuebingen, a father strangled his 16-year old daughter and then cast her lifeless body into a lake, merely for having a boyfriend.
At the time of the Der Spiegel article (September) there were six boys in Berlin's juvenile prison for honor killings.
And forced marriages are common, according to the national German TV network, ARD. It states that there are an estimated 30,000 forced brides living in Germany. A report by San Francisco Gate quotes Nelle Kalek,an Istanbul native, who is employed in Hamburg as a sociologist.
He blames the German government, for not passing laws which punish parents who attempt to contract marriage against the wills of their offspring. He says that "growing Islamic radicalization of many Turkish communities in German cities" has helped the situation to get worse.
According to Qantara.de, most victims of forced marriages in Germany come from Turkish and Kurdish families, but there are also examples of such cases from Lebanese, Moroccan, Tunisian, Albanian, Iranian and Indian communities.
AUSTRIA
The country which was most opposed to Turkey's accession to the European Union has a Muslim population of 400,000. Most of these are from Turkey. And here forced marriages are a problem. Orient Express is an organisation which exists to help girls being forced to marry against their will. According to a report from December last year, the organisation helped 28 young women in the previous few months. There are no actual figures for forced marriages in Austria, but there are thought to be less than 1,000 cases of such unions in the country.
FRANCE
Figures for France's forced marriages, as for other countries, are only estimates, as traditionalist Muslim communities do not like to reveal to the wider society what goes on in their closed environments.
What does appear to be happening, is a custom of young girls being forced into marriage. According to the March report from the Council for Europe, in the French departement of Val d'Oise, it is estimated that there are around 15 such cases in schools every year. The corresponding figure in Seine-Saint-Denis is thought to be closer to 30.
In March this year, France raised the age of marriage from 15 to 18, with the deliberate intention of preventing forced marriages. The amended law will also make it an offence to confiscate travel or identity documents to prevent a partner leaving.
The majority of France's Muslim community derives from North Africa, from its former colonies of Tunisia and Algeria. An article on forced marriages by Azam Kamguian states: "Under French law, a forced marriage can be annulled if there has been lack of consent. But if the marriage ceremony is a customary one, the French courts cannot act. However, magistrates can intervene before a marriage takes place if an underage girl, who has broken with her family, is in physical danger.
Under the guise of respecting 'others' traditions and Islamic values, the legal system and authorities tend to overlook forced marriages. They say: "there are customs and religion, which are different from those, practiced here. It is not for us to judge these traditions and religion, unless the young girls are in physical danger and there should be proof for that.""
We first described the work of Fadel Amara (pictured below) and Samira Belil in uncovering the appalling treatment of women in the Muslim communities of French suburban projects in October. Fadel Amara, of Algerian origins, founded a charity called "Ni Putes Ni Soumises" (Neither Prostiutes nor Submissives), which now has 6,000 members.
Samira Belil had been a patron of this charity until she died of stomach cancer, aged 31 in September 2004. She described in a book entitled Dans l'Enfer des Tournantes (In the hell of the gang-raped) on the culture of violence against women, and recounted her own horrific experiences.
Fadel Amara campaigns against the cruelty (such as burning women alive, as in the case of Chahrazad Belayni on November 13, while Muslim youths were hogging headlines with rioting) and sexism of Muslim culture in the suburbs, where women are treated as second-class citizens. Her charity also campaigns against forced marriages, which are apparently common in the French Muslim communities.
Amara was spurred to form the group after Sohanne Benziane, a 17-year-old Muslim girl from Vitry-sur-Seine, a southeastern suburb of Paris, was burned alive in 2002 for trespassing onto the "territory" of Muslim thug Jamal Derrar. He poured petrol over the girl's head, before he pulled out a cigarette lighter. He flicked it alight and extinguished it several times to reduce her to tears before he immolated her. In April this year, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. When he had returned with police to reenact the crime, local youths applauded him.
Young women forced into marriages against their wills are rarely heard in such a hostile environment. If a girl is not born in France and has a residence permit, this can be forfeited if she is sent back to the "country of origin" to marry. According to SOS Femmes: If a young woman resides more than 3 consecutives years outside of French territory, she loses her right to live in France. And this is the case even if it is noted on her alien resident permit "valid 10 years" .
According to Mondediplo, a 2003 report by the Haut Conseil a l'Immigration (High Council on immigration) stated that there were 70,000 cases of forced marriage in France.
BRITAIN
Britain's track record on documenting and dealing with forced marriage is marred ultimately by two factors - politicians' desire to woo the Muslim vote preventing actual legislation, and a climate of political correctness. There is a politically correct notion which assumes that arranged marriages are somehow "culturally acceptable", even though these marriages are a back-door means of increasing immigration into Britain's already overcrowded shores. But Britain is not alone. These desires not to "offend" or "alienate" are the reasons why so far, only Norway and Belgium have legislation against forced marriages in the ENTIRE WORLD.
Over the past four years, the UK Home Office has dealt with 1,000 cases of forced marriage.
On Wednesday, 27 October, 2004, the BBC reported that the Home Office was planning a consultation exercise to consider if forced marriages should be banned.
Baroness Scotland, Home Office minister, said: "Forced marriage is part of no one's culture and I think some people conflate arranged marriage, which is consensual and perfectly proper, with marriages where people are forced into it. No religion, no cultural norm says that is OK. It is a breach of human rights."
Baroness Scotland is unaware, it seems, how closely arranged marriages are to forced marriages. I knew Muslim women whose parents used every conceivable emotional blackmail, with the ever-attendant threat of violence from cousins and other relatives, to force their daughters to marry on the parents' terms.
There were an estimated 300 cases of forced marriages between April 2003 and April 2004 in Britain.
In 2005, the notion of making forced marriages illegal once again was set forward by the UK parliament, but once again, nothing has been done. No parliamentary motions have been tabled, and considering the politically correct temperament of Tony Blair's Labour Party, such moves are not likely to happen in the duration of this parliament. And though the news has been downplayed in the media, the British government has now officially abandoned its plans to criminalise forced marriage.
Despite the much publicised moves by Tony Blair's Labour government to be "seen" to be doing something about the situation of forced marriages, it was all a hollow publicity exercise.
In its eagerness to appease the Muslim community and garner votes, it has finally capitulated to Muslim pressure. Muslim votes are more important than the welfare of innocent girls and young women, raised in Muslim homes. An item from the Daily Mail highlights the dhimmitude of the Blair government in Britain.
Forced marriages, as we described, involve the denial of a young woman, often a minor, of the most basic of human rights, the most important being her right to choose her own future husband, and to choose who is allowed to have sex with her body.
Two years ago, Britain wanted to introduce a law to outlaw forced marriages, and set up a Home Office consultancy on the matter. Every year 200 cases of forced marriage are reported to the Foreign and Commonwealth office, and police guidelines make pains to differentiate between "arranged" and "forced" marriage.
A special Foreign Office unit has assisted more than 1,250 people who were subjected to forced marriages since it started in 2000, rescuing 200 people a year from abroad.
Many victims of forced marriage are tricked to go abroad, to countries like Pakistan or Bangladesh on the parent's pretext of "visiting relatives", and once abroad they are made to marry against their will, and often under the legal age of consent for Britain.
The true figure for forced marriages is unknown, but it is estimated that at least 1,000 cases of such abuse happen annually. The closed nature of the Muslim communities prevent cases being highlighted in the media. When a girl is dumped in a foreign country, it is easy to pretend to the community that she is "happily married".
As we reported on May 28, there is a strong link between forced marriages with both arranged marriages and also, more seriously, honour killings. When a girl is targeted by parents to become a bride and goes against Muslim parents' plans, she can be hunted down by relatives, or even by hit-men hired by the family.
But this week, the Home Office announced that it would no longer be planning to make forced marriages illegal. The Muslim Council for Britain, whose last head, "Sir" Iqbal Sacranie supported terrorists such as Osama bin Laden (whom he tried to bring to the UK in 1996) and also Hamas, was always opposed to outlawing forced marriages.
The MCB claimed that outlawing forced marriage would see children made to give evidence at their parents' trials and could lead to the Muslim community being "stigmatised", the Mail states.
So for the MCB it is more important for the Muslim community to be protected from stigma and for abusers of a child's rights to go unpunished than to provide justice to young women, who in many cases are still children.
The Muslim Council for Britain's newly elected leader, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, states in an interview in the Telegraph for Saturday 10 June that not only does he approve of "arranged" marriages, but he believes that Britain should learn from the Muslims and adopt them too.
The decision by Baroness Scotland of the Home Office to abandon attempts to criminalise the human rights abuses of forced marriage was met with disappointment by the NSPCC.
The NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) is Britain's leading child welfare charity. Its Head of Policy and Public Affairs is Diana Sutton. She said: "The coercion involved in forced marriage is abusive and a violation of children's human rights. We know that forced marriage can have serious harmful consequences for children including physical, emotional and sexual abuse, kidnap, rape and self harm. In the most tragic cases it can result in murder and suicide. In the longer term, many women forced in to marriage suffer domestic violence, whose impact on children is now widely documented."
David Davis, the Conservatives' Shadow Home Secretary, said: "The Government seems to be ignoring the views of the victims of this abhorrent practice. We remain to be convinced that ministers will use their existing powers to stamp out this degrading and vile practice."
He said the Government's much-hyped launch of its campaign 18 months ago which has now been shelved suggested that ministers were "more interested in grabbing headlines than delivering results."
And obviously, the government cares more about appeasing Muslims (and gaining their votes) and approving their alien and barbaric marriage customs, than it does about supporting the rights of young, often underage girls. These girls have the misfortune to be born into a family that sees them as nothing more than brood-mares, chattels to be bartered off with no consideration of their wishes. And the government does not care about protecting them.
The BBC, which like a poodle vaunted and publicised the Home Office proposals when they were first laid out, has not given a single column inch to report that the Blair government is going to do nothing to prevent these abuses of young lives.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 8, 2006 11:47 PM
Comments
Superb roundup. Just FYI, I linked to your post from my article, Arkansas Law Allowing Toddlers To Marry Repealed - http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/04/arkansas_law_allowing_toddlers_to_marry_repealed.html
Posted by: planck's constant ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.westernresistance.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 4, 2008 3:58 PM
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