MixTogether & Friends

Last Sunday’s Telegraph carried a solid piece on forced marriage by Cyrus Shahrad.

Women who escape forced marriages.

The piece includes testimony from victims and key workers in the field, including Jasvinder Sanghera (Karma Nirvana), Zena (previously of Jack and Zena) and Olaf Henricson-Bell (Forced Marriage Unit).

As such it is a very competent, standard-issue piece on forced marriage. The conclusions at the end are also very familiar to anyone who follows this subject:

Yet some, including Jasvinder Sanghera, believe there’s still much to be done. She’s lobbying David Cameron to make good on his electoral promise to criminalise forced marriage (the statutory guidelines of the 2008 Forced Marriage Civil Protection Act carry no penalty to enforce implementation, and the affiliated protection orders can lead to under-age victims being returned to their families, which she says is ‘very worrying’).

Others claim that victims are still falling into gaps between government policy and practice: Bita Ghaedi, for example, whom the Home Office has been trying to deport since she arrived in Britain without a passport in October 2006, having fled a man she was forced to marry in Tehran.

The big forced marriage campaigners habitually target agencies of the British state (the Government, the courts, the Police, social services) and lobby them for improvements in service provision to victims or more effective legal remedies. Reading these kind of reports, one would be forgiven for thinking that the key to solving the problems of forced marriage lies with the British state.

It actually lies with the communities where these problems originate.

Although state and voluntary agencies must strive to provide the best possible services for victims, there will come a point when they can do no more. The law of diminishing returns applies to campaigning in this area as it does everywhere else, and over the last 5 years a great deal has been achieved. If the Conservatives deliver on their promise to criminalise forced marriage (fingers crossed), there is literally no more that Government can offer in terms of legislation. What will e.g. Jasvinder Sanghera campaign on after that?

The time is rapidly approaching when campaigners will have to turn their attention to preventative measures rather than treatments.

MixTogether’s ongoing attempt to get some recognition of marriage issues within Asian broadcast media is one of the first preventative campaigns by any group. Eventually all campaigners will have to admit that the problem lies not with Britain but with certain unwelcome cultural imports from South Asia and other countries that need to be confronted at source and removed.

Forced Marriage- no place for political correctness.

Jasvinder Sanghera has once again attacked political correctness as a barrier to the fight against forced marriage.

Speaking at a conference in Burnley attended by high ranking professionals from the police and social services, she said:

We now need to take this forward and put cultural differences to one side and stop skirting around the issues for fear of racial offence – there are girls and women right now who are suffering horrendous abuse and we need to something about that.

The Burnley Express has more details:

Honour-based violence and forced marriage conference success

The day saw a number of excellent presentations but perhaps more important were the full and frank question-and-answer sessions after each speaker. With delegates from a range on backgrounds such as: police, education and social care from around the UK, there were many varied opinions and ideas shared. One of the main discussion points was the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act 2007 which came into force in November 2008.

Mick Turner, former Detective Superintendent with Lancashire Police and Director of Sancus Solutions, said: “The conference has been a huge success. With so many delegates from different areas of work there was a real buzz of discussion. The speakers all spoke with great authority and passion and have hopefully started to influence some key people from different agencies across the UK.

Campaigners against so-called honour killings have spoken with one voice against multiculturalism after Tulay Goren’s father was jailed for her murder.

Jasvinder Sanghera leads the charge with a blistering article in today’s Times entitled ‘It is not part of anyone’s culture to be abused‘:

I know from personal experience, and from working with victims, that such “honour” crimes are a huge social problem in this country. The shame is not just that it is happening on such a large scale, but that it is so often covered up for fear of upsetting cultural sensibilities. Serious crimes are being treated as a matter for diversity officers rather than for the police and the courts…

Over the past 20 years attitudes towards domestic violence among the white population have changed immeasurably. No longer do police say “it’s just a domestic” when they receive a call from a woman who is being attacked by her husband. Sadly, different standards still apply to violence among Asians. While it is too late for Tulay Goren, I hope that the story of her appalling and avoidable death will finally wake us up to the abuse taking place in our midst and that we will stop trying to excuse forced marriage as just a price to pay for multicultural diversity.

Diana Nammi, director of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, is outspoken in her criticism of multicultural sensitivities in the Labour government:

She said: “It’s not just the detection of honour crimes which is increasing, but the number of crimes which are committed. The rise of fundamentalism is the reason these crimes are increasing. The Government has also been turning a blind eye to the problem, which only makes things worse.

Labour’s Ann Cryer is equally direct in the Telegraph:

Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley, near Bradford, who has campaigned to raise awareness of honour crimes, said local councils in areas with large ethnic minority populations remain reluctant to confront the problem because it is such a politically sensitive issue.

She said: “It is a real struggle to get this issue out in the open because instead of looking after the human rights of vulnerable young women you get accused of doing down the Asian community.

“One of the difficulties is that you have very large extended families in places like Bradford, which are very influential, and local councillors are afraid of upsetting them because they think they will lose votes. As a result local authorities are reluctant to talk about this issue.

Sanghera agrees:

Up until last month, 86 forced marriage protection orders have been issued, yet not one of them was in Bradford, Leicester or Tower Hamlets. Is this because forced marriage is not a problem in those areas, all of which have some of the largest Asian populations in Britain? Or is it because authorities there are failing to use the powers for fear of creating offence? I am afraid it is the latter.

Ceri Radford, Assistant Comment Editor of the Telegraph, concludes her blog post on Tulay’s murder with another powerful quote from Jasvinder Sanghera:

It’s like we’ve tunnelled back in time to when troublesome women could be drowned as witches.

Tulay Goren was killed in 1999; a year later, the Government set up a task force to combat forced marriages, and there has been a broader shift away from multicultural policies. As Sanghera has said, “It’s a betrayal of these women to be PC about this. Look at the figures. Asian women in Britain are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white friends.” Every woman in Britain deserves the same opportunities, and the same protection.

What about coverage from the left-wing press?

The Guardian’s only coverage of Tulay Goren’s murder is confined to a single piece of bald factual reporting from the trial. They have not bothered to interview any of the main campaigners, and at the time of writing this have no coverage of the issue on Comment Is Free. The Independent fares no better.

So-called honour crime, and the alien value systems that breed it, should not find shelter on any side of the political spectrum. Yet the murder of Tulay Goren has uncovered yet more criticism of the multicultural doctrine and political correctness that have been the hallmarks of life under Labour for the last 12 years.

It is time for campaigners and politicians who question the benefits of multiculturalism to join forces, and begin to dismantle the damaging social architecture that has protected so-called honour crime for so long.

This is the inaugural post on MixTogether & Friends,

from Jasvinder Sanghera of Karma Nirvana.

I am very happy to be writing the inaugural post for this new blog, MixTogether & Friends.

My hope is that this blog will generate and improve discussion about the real issues of honour abuse and forced marriages in Britain. I hope that the realities of how these abuses are blighting the lives of many will inspire action.

With that aim in mind, my opening post is an invitation to join a crucial campaign.

The Honour Network, a phoneline that supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honour based violence, is under threat of having its government funding cut.

I am simply asking you to add your name to a petition on the Number 10 website, requesting that the Honour Network helpline continue to be funded. If you could spread the word to your respective online networks that would also be a real help.

We do not have any funding now to sustain the line, having previously received funding from the Home Office and Forced Marriage Unit.

Despite my pleas for support to the Government we have found ourselves in the position of having to eventually close the life-line that many people call in need of Karma Nirvana’s support.

The fact is that the line has been funded by kind public donations  for the past 6 months despite the Governments commitment to supporting the Honour Network.

This is a truly progressive campaign that should appeal to people of all political persuasions. If you would like to read my detailed account of the background to this campaign, please click ‘more’ below.

Thank you,

Jasvinder Sanghera

Karma Nirvana.

(more…)