Examination of Witnesses (Questions 238
- 259)
THURSDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2008
JAGDEESH, IMRAN,
AJMAL, ANITA,
KIRANJIT AND
MEENA
* Name has been changed to protect identity
[***] Indicated text has been removed
Q238 Mrs Cryer: I am Ann Cryer and
I am substitute Chairman of this Home Affairs Committee meeting.
I want to say welcome to you all and thank you very, very much
for being here because I know this is a very difficult thing for
you to do to volunteer to do this, and I really do appreciate
it. I wonder if we could start at one end and if each of you very
briefly introduce yourselves and then we will go into the questions.
We are few in number but we will share out the questions. Anita,
would you like to start?
Anita: My name
is Anita—
Q239 Mrs Cryer: Could you speak up.
I did not realise the microphones did not amplify the sound. I
am deaf but I will just have to struggle.
Anita: My name is Anita and I
have an immigration problem and my husband beat me so many times.
That is why I have come here to talk with you.
Kiranjit: In 1992 I was released
from prison. I suffered domestic violence and I was given a life
sentence. The Southall Black Sisters took up my campaign and this
is how I was released in 1992. Since then I always go to their
office to ask for their help. It has been a very useful organisation
for me.
Q240 Mrs Cryer: Is the shorthand
writer hearing this? I am afraid I am not but I am not asking
you to say it all again. Imran?
Imran: My name is Imran. My journey
started at the age of 10 when I was taken to Pakistan. I was engaged
to my uncle's daughter; she was five years old. Not knowing what
was happening, I assumed it was a party. Money was given to me
as gifts and garlands were put round me. I stayed four months
and came back to the UK. At the age of 15 my sister showed me
the photos of the engagement. I was sitting my O levels at Waverley
School. I was then taken out of school and I was taken to Pakistan
on a holiday at the age of 17. I was kidnapped and drugged and
abducted and taken to a deserted village in a mosque and shackled
up in chains for 15 days. I escaped with the help of a nine-year-old
and came back to the UK. I still got pressurised by my family
to get married to the same girl I had got engaged to. At the age
of 24 I was emotionally blackmailed when my mum was in hospital.
When I asked her, "What can I do to help?" she said
to go and get married otherwise it would be my fault if anything
happened to her. I went to Pakistan and got married. She came
within the three months and I got the (inaudible).
Jagdeesh: I represent the landmark
case of Surjit Athwal which last year came to a legal conclusion
in this country. My sister Surjit went missing abroad in very
suspicious circumstances in December 1998 and, following her disappearance,
I took the lead on a nine-year sustained campaign to get to the
bottom of her disappearance, which we feared was an honour murder
from the start. We had to undergo a mountainous struggle for the
police to undertake the case; we undertook a mountainous struggle
with the Foreign Office with whom we still have not made any progress;
and we underwent a huge struggle with all manner of official departments,
chiefly the police and the Foreign Office, the end result of which
was the case coming to fruition in the form of a prosecution last
year.
***
The case has thrown up huge lessons and huge questions
about official action in these types of cases.
Q241 Mrs Cryer: I think you explained
your case on the radio a few weeks ago, is that right, or it was
an identical one if it was not you?
Jagdeesh: I was on Taking a
Stand on Radio Four.
Q242 Mrs Cryer: That is right, Taking
a Stand. Thank you very much, Jagdeesh. Ajmal?
Ajmal: My name is Ajmal. At the
age of 19 I fell in love with my ex-wife Angela and then I was
kidnapped by own father, taken to Germany and then taken to Pakistan.
Two years later I came back to the UK and they forced me through
an annulment. Eight years later I saw a show on the television
which was based on Karma Nirvana and after I saw that show I got
in touch with them. Imran is now my male support worker and I
am moving forward in my life with the help of Karma Nirvana.
Mrs Cryer: Thank you very much, Ajmal.
I am still struggling to hear.
Q243 Martin Salter: Could I ask Jagdeesh,
would you mind if we requested the tape not necessarily from you,
we can get it through the Clerk, of your BBC programme?
Jagdeesh: By all means, yes.
Martin Salter: I did not hear it and
they are usually very good programmes.
Q244 Mrs Cryer: It is really good
and it was a much much bigger thing than we are going to get this
afternoon because of the limitation of time.
Jagdeesh: There is an accompanying
seven-page document that we have prepared.
Q245 Martin Salter: We have got that.
Jagdeesh: It gives an almost encyclopaedic
account of all the obstructive issues we encountered.
Q246 Martin Salter: Is that "Justice
for Surjit"?
Jagdeesh: That is right.
Q247 Mrs Cryer: I am struggling to
hear you; I do apologise about that. I was not aware that we were
not going to have amplification otherwise I would asked somebody
else to do it. I think it is very unfair on committees that we
do not have amplification. What strikes me is that we are having
amplification for radio and TV but not for us and because this
is in private we do not get amplification. Anyway, that is my
problem. We are going to divide up the questions. Can I start
with a question to all of you. How would you explain the concept
of honour and family and what it means in your community—you
are from different communities—because a lot of people do
not understand this? What kinds of behaviour does honour dictate?
You do not all have to answer.
Imran: I would say that honour
plays a big part in the Asian community, for example, if you wear
Western clothes or if a girl is going out with a boy or a boy
is going out with a girl, having a mobile phone, being bisexual.
Q248 Mrs Cryer: Does anyone else
want to have a go?
Kiranjit: Family honour is very
important in my community. After two years of suffering with my
husband I went to my family and asked for help. I told them, "I
don't want to live with him, he has treated me really badly,"
but family honour was more important than my life and my happiness,
so the family does not help. I went to relatives and friends and
they said, "No, you have to keep it. It is in your destiny
and however he is treating you, you have to live your life like
this." So family honour is very important for the community.
They do not care how the girls, their daughters, live their lives
with their partner, so I suffered a lot and I was totally trapped.
Q249 Mrs Cryer: Did Anita want to
say something?
Anita: It is the same thing like
Kiranjit. We come from the same community. Our community thinks
that if we are not living with our husbands because of violence
and abuse, that means we are bad, not he is bad, and they think
that after you are married a girl goes to their in-law family
and they live there and they do not come back to their home. That
is the bad thing about honour in our community. They think we
are bad girls and that is why we are not living with our partners,
but they do not think that because of this abuse and this violence
we left them.
Q250 Mrs Cryer: Does anyone want
to say anything else on this one? I am going to ask another question
but it is similar so perhaps you could combine it. How could the
idea that honour justifies violence be challenged? What can be
done to encourage community or religious leaders to condemn forced
marriage or honour-based violence?
Jagdeesh: Crimes where honour
is a dominant factor could be described as crimes of passion.
Honour as detailed is such a paralysing and regimenting notion
within lots of communities which are reflected around the table
here. Honour is so important to them, rightly or wrongly, that
it is better to kill your own daughter or kill your own son than
walk with dishonour or bring about dishonour on your family. In
the Western world this looks very, very starkly obscene, weird,
horrible, disgraceful, although I would pause and say that issues
of honour have existed within medieval England as well—dishonouring
the King and dishonouring traditions and things like that. Nonetheless,
coming to the very issue of honour and violence, if I was the
father of a dishonourable child, I would not receive condemnation
or opposition from significant sectors within our community because
they would see that I was just carrying out what was a medieval
tradition and it was quite normal, and I may even be treated as
a hero for reviving and sustaining a tradition that is increasingly
being lost or dissipated. What we see, certainly in the case of
my sister and indeed other cases within the Sikh Punjabi community,
is that there is this magnificently horrible silence across the
Sikh organisations and the mainstream Sikh gurdawaras. Surjit's
case was treated as this alien object. It was too hot to handle
and nobody wanted to grab it or put their hand into the hornets'
nest and try and poke around it and say right this is an important,
relevant case, it reflects many other cases. I think there is
a great deal of work that needs to be done, in my opinion, not
just at a local level but with government impetus to address this
phenomenon which has existed in this country amongst the migrant
communities not just now but since the 1960s, which has been very
efficiently concealed. I think there needs to be some kind of
robust initiative by central government to say this is a crime,
it is happening, it is affecting many UK citizens and we need
to take an initiative and we expect community groups to co-operate
with us in a manner that is beneficial to communities. I think
there needs to be some clear thinking and discussion around it.
Otherwise communities and religious bodies, left to their own
devices, will not do anything, and nobody can force them to touch
on this issue which exists within them and is silently sanctioned.
Without some external impetus they will stay frozen in their state
of indifference.
Q251 Mrs Cryer: Can I just clarify
that. What you are saying I think is that the status quo is in
the interests of community leaders and therefore they are not
interested?
Jagdeesh: In the interests of
the community leaders and, moreover, in the interests of the killers
themselves because they enjoy this silence and this inaction that
exists within the community and facilitates these kinds of killings.
Mrs Cryer: Thank you, Jagdeesh. I think
Martin wants to come in.
Q252 Martin Salter: Carrying on with
what you are saying, Jagdeesh, for the tradition to exist it clearly
needs, by definition, to be passed from one generation to another.
Is there any evidence, in your experience from migrant communities,
that the tradition is starting to die out with each generation
or is it being enhanced and replicated?
Jagdeesh: I would say that there
are two opposite forces battling with each other. There is the
very entrenched initial migrant, male-dominated generation (and
invariably honour crimes are male-dominated and male-driven and
committed largely by males, although not exclusively, as we see
with the two examples we have here). This tradition has been passed
down by initial first-generation migrants to second-generation
migrants and along the way it is suffering opposition from other
different types of thinking that it is wrong, it is cruel, it
should not have to happen, it is unnecessary, but there is a sufficient
entrenched body of opinion within the general communities to enable
this kind of practice to carry on to this very day, and I would
say will carry on for another 20 years yet easily. In the absence
of any organised effort against it, it will easily sustain itself
for another 20 years before we see any downward trend in it.
Mrs Cryer: Margaret Moran, Member of
Parliament for one of the Luton seats, is going to ask you a number
of questions now.
Q253 Margaret Moran: Could I just
pick up the point that was made about impetus from central government
to change opinion. How can that be reconciled with another view
which is that there has to be a bottom-up approach to tackling
the issues within the community? Would it not be perceived as
a central diktat to diverse communities if there were the kind
of action that you seem to be advocating?
Jagdeesh: No, certainly not. I
think that you need to empower. The critical issue here that can
easily be lost is that you need to empower the affected communities,
the grassroots communities, and you need to empower groups like
the Southall Black Sisters and others to be able to do that positive
work in the communities. At the moment what you have got is this
massive dominant silence generated by the community leaders. An
ordinary member of the community does not feel able or confident
a) to go to the police b) and to go to an organisation like Southall
Black Sisters and c) they think, "Why am I going to put my
neck on the line when I am not even clear that the police are
going to do anything with my report, so why should I put my neck
on the line? It has happened, it is horrible; I will quietly withdraw
back into my life and let it happen." There needs to be official
government-driven support, let me say, not so much diktat or hijacking
the issue, and government-level support for community groups,
for campaign groups to drive this issue forward. At the moment
these are small fish fighting their battle against big fish in
a big sea. They can only fight so much but they are fighting and
they will continue to fight. We will continue to fight but we
are very small fish faced by big piranhas out there and unless
some big supporting force comes and helps us we will always remain
in that very uneven equation.
Q254 Margaret Moran: Thank you. It
sort of follows on from this and it is a question to Imran and
to Ajmal. Both of you had very significant pressure from your
family and from your communities in different ways. What would
have helped you to resist that pressure in those circumstances?
Imran: For me it was education.
At that age, 15, there was nothing to teach you about forced marriages
and domestic violence. If I had realised there was any support
there I would have got it, but at that age I did not know if I
had a choice at the age of 15. For me it was education strongly.
Q255 Margaret Moran: Ajmal?
Ajmal: Since I was brought up
mainly in school you did not see posters up—
Q256 Margaret Moran: Can you speak
up.
Ajmal: When I was growing up mainly
in schools you did see posters for drug abuse and for females
if there is any help out there, but as a male I did not see any
posters about who I could speak to. It was just one of those things.
I just did not want anyone to laugh at me because you had never
seen it on TV and never seen any male support out there or refuges.
It was making it difficult because it was never advertised on
TV and you do not know where you can get help from.
Mrs Cryer: Martin Salter is going to
ask more detailed questions about what should be done in schools
later. Margaret?
Q257 Margaret Moran: Thank you for
that. Questions to Kiranjit and Anita. Both of you suffered severe
domestic violence at the hands of your husbands. You clearly did
not get support to tackle the issue of domestic violence. Why
was that? Was there nobody there for you or did you not know?
What would have helped you in those circumstances?
Kiranjit: My husband started beating
me from the first day of our marriage and I suffered from his
violence. He used to smash my head on the walls, pull my hair
and strangle me. There was always a knife on the table and he
was always threatening me. I tried my best and I went to my family
but they never helped. I went to my husband's family and eventually
I tried to kill myself twice. I ended up in hospital. Then I went
to the police and the police said, "No, it is your personal
problem; we do not want to get involved; we cannot help you; you
have to solve your own problem; it is a family matter." Then
I went to court. I could not speak English in those days. I was
scared to go out because I was not allowed to see my family, I
was not allowed to use my telephone. Eventually I went to court
and I got two injunctions and both times he apologised and promised;
I did my best but I was totally trapped—family, the law,
the police, I was stuck.
Anita: I came to the UK in 2006
to my cousin's house. Slowly, slowly he started violence against
me and, the same, I tried to kill myself once and no-one helped
me. Still I do not speak English properly and at that time I did
not know where I could get help from anyone. Twice I did a police
case but the police did not help me. They did not provide me with
any type of help. They just wrote a report and they said, "We
will call you back," but they never called me back. That
is why I had more problems and every time my husband kicked me
out of my house, I stayed outside and then he felt it was not
good and then he apologised and he said sorry and he used to take
me inside. So many times he did these things and once I was so
fed up that I decided to kill myself, to cut my wrists, because
I said no, I do not want to live my life because I cannot handle
all these situations. No-one helped me, not even my father-in-law
or my own family. I had no relatives and no friends, so where
do I go to in that situation? I did not know.
Q258 Mrs Cryer: I will just ask a
couple of questions of all of you. You do not all have to answer,
just whoever wants to. Did you report your abuse to the police
and what was their response? Do you feel they took your claim
seriously? Should forced marriage be criminalised? I think Jagdeesh
has already said this. Do you think that making it a criminal
offence would discourage communities from practising forced marriage
or would it just make it worse? If you could cover those two questions.
Who wants to go first?
Imran: I did not report anything
to the police. Yes, I think forced marriage should be a criminal
offence. Families would think twice before forcing their kids
into a marriage. Also if it was a criminal offence it would make
them think really, really hard that it is a criminal offence and
they could go to prison for it.
Q259 Mrs Cryer: Some of the arguments
are that women particularly would be less likely to report abuse
if it started to involve their parents being criminalised. You
do not feel that that would be a greater deterrent than already
exists?
Imran: We should take that into
consideration, but my view highly would be, like I said, it should
be a criminal offence. Domestic violence is a criminal offence
so why should forced marriage not be a criminal offence?
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