Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 319)
THURSDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2008
JAGDEESH, IMRAN,
AJMAL, ANITA,
KIRANJIT AND
MEENA
Q300 Mrs Cryer: You may not have
a job at 18 and be less independent.
Ajmal: Sure.
Q301 Mrs Cryer: Our proper Chairman,
Keith Vaz, has just arrived and I do not know whether he wants
to participate or not but until he tells me to the contrary I
will carry on. Is there anyone else that would like to comment
on the upping of the age from 18 to 21? Do you all agree?
Imran: Yes.
Q302 Mrs Cryer: You all go along
with what Ajmal has said. Do you think forced marriages are often
carried out in order to get a visa to the UK, by either a man
or a women, to get in from the subcontinent?
Ajmal: Yes, that is true.
Q303 Mrs Cryer: You think it is visa
based?
Ajmal: I think it is visa based
because every marriage is safe. They will get married and just
up to that limit where it says this person has got indefinite
leave, whether it is a male or a female, the marriage will end
from that point and they will say, "I don't want to live
with you," or they sign a contract beforehand saying, "Okay,
I will marry you just for the visa," and they will stay okay
until that time.
Q304 Mrs Cryer: I have got to say
I get a lot of very angry young women coming to me about this
and I am sure we all do. Does anyone else want to comment on this
question of do people marry in order to get a visa in order to
come here? Do you all agree with what Ajmal has just said or do
you have a different view?
Jagdeesh: I think there is a huge
practice of this across communities certainly and often females
are the bigger victims in all this. UK-born and UK-settled females
are used as marriage fodder for a lot of aspiring males who want
to get over, and once they are over and settled and permanent,
they can go on fishing for bigger fish out there.
Q305 Mrs Cryer: Have you any ideas
about how we could get round that or how communities could get
round that? Have you any ideas about how perhaps community centres
or mosques, or whatever, could act as marriage bureaus to encourage
marriage within the settled community rather than doing it this
way? I have thought long and hard about this and I have not got
a solution I am afraid.
Jagdeesh: The whole subject area
of community bodies like mosques and gurdawaras and others, it
is an area that needs extensive exploration and we need to start
from first principles. There is a huge glut of inaction and cover-up
and "don't care, don't do" and I think before we even
get to the point you are now suggesting there need to be several
preliminary steps to say to them in semi robust terms, "Enough
is enough, as public institutions although serving a particular
community, we expect you to perform a public duty on this subject,
and if you are not going to, then maybe we need to consider our
position in legal terms as a government in terms of the way we
engage with you or do not engage with you." I think morally
it is repugnant that you have got these huge institutions, hugely
financed actively colluding with these kinds of practices.
Q306 Mrs Cryer: Does everyone agree
with what Jagdeesh has just said?
Imran: Yes.
Q307 Martin Salter: Can I ask a controversial
question. Was the problem made worse when we got rid of the primary
purpose rule? The primary purpose rule was put to us as people
who were elected in 1997 as something that was artificially keeping
families apart, but the one argument that was, on occasion, made
in favour of it—and I do not know if it had any validity
at all—was that it was a check against attempts to force
people into marriage. I really do not know the answer; I just
want to ask the question because I think it has to be asked.
Jagdeesh: Can you define the primary
purpose rule for us?
Martin Salter: The primary purpose rule
allowed immigration officers and the Home Office—and Keith
will know better than anyone—to refuse an entry clearance
visa because they were not satisfied that the marriage was genuine.
Mrs Cryer: That was the primary purpose.
Martin Salter: That it was the primary
purpose of the application in other words, but you are probably
too young, to be honest. We are too old rather; you are not too
young!
Mrs Cryer: I will move on unless, Keith,
you want to come in?
Chairman: I am fine.
Mrs Cryer: We will move on to individual
questions and the first two will be put by Margaret Moran.
Q308 Margaret Moran: I wanted to
follow up one of the questions that you raised earlier on. Some
of the questions have already been covered so it is better not
to repeat them. Coming back to the issue, you were all of the
view that the age for sponsoring marriage should be raised to
21. Was that what you were all saying? Does everybody agree with
that? Could I just probe that a bit. Obviously in the UK, the
age at which you are deemed to be adult enough to take decisions
and take responsibility on some issues is 16 but the majority
are 18. Why do you think that at 18 somebody is not in a position
to make a decision like that and what would be the difference
when they were 21? Would it not just push the issue further?
Jagdeesh: I think this will create
legal complications and moral complications in the application
of a double rule if in the UK, as you say, 18 is the starting
point at which you can legally get married. I think it is an area
that is full of valid, understandable opinions but one needs to
give it more detailed thought and one needs to ask whether forced
marriage is the essential subject area that we want to try and
look at and whether raising the age will address that or whether
there are other ways, such as something like the primary rule
aspect, or something, whereby would-be marriages need to be more
vigorously scrutinised rather than shifting the age gap. It is
the would-be marriage that needs to be scrutinised to verify that
it is genuine.
Q309 Margaret Moran: So a debate
around the age might be a distraction from looking at some of
the other issues?
Jagdeesh: I think it is a distraction.
Shifting the age sounds good and simple, but on further examination
it distracts, it does not inject any obstruction against false
marriages. It is the forced marriage bit and whether it is a valid,
meaningful marriage that needs to be scrutinised.
Q310 Margaret Moran: We should focus
n the outcomes in relation to forced marriage. Thank you, that
is very helpful indeed.
Jagdeesh: Yes.
Q311 Margaret Moran: Has anybody
been in the position or know somebody where they have been forced
to sign papers to say that there is a subsisting relationship
and, in particular, do you know of anybody who has tried to alert
the Home Office Immigration Service to that happening? Is that
anything within anybody's experience?
Ajmal: After my first wife I was
talking about, Angela, they forced me to go through another marriage,
and they were saying I had signed the papers, and I could not
remember that I had signed the papers. They forged my signature
and got it stamped from the High Court of Pakistan from Islamabad
stating I was legally married to this girl. I was not agreeing
to it and she tried to get a visa and she got entry clearance
as well for coming to the UK. I went to the airport. My uncle
was a barrister in Pakistan and I told him about it and there
was a stop put on it, but most people have not got those kind
of facilities that they could go to higher places or anywhere
to get that thing stopped. For many in the Asian community, what
I am saying is, or any community, it is the same risk factor.
Q312 Margaret Moran: Because we heard
that this was happening and that the immigration officials were
not paying attention or were not listening. You seem to be agreeing
with that?
Ajmal: Yes.
Q313 Margaret Moran: Just one final
question, it is really to Anita but perhaps Kiranjit with her
experience of Southall Black Sisters now may be able to help.
We changed the immigration rules in relation to domestic violence
and I think you are involved in this right now. Does anybody have
a view on how long it takes to deal with that?
Meena: Anita's application has
not gone in yet. One of the things that is happening is that it
has taken several months in which to collate the evidence because
the solicitor has applied to the police for their report but they
are saying it will be 40 days before they will supply the evidence
and with the GPs it could be roughly 20 days before they supply
that evidence. When you have got agencies like ours, it could
take a week before we provide that evidence because we are also
burdened with quite a lot of work and it is difficult to churn
it out very quickly. In some cases it has been three months and
in some cases it has been six months and in some cases it has
been years before they have had a decision, so it varies from
one case to another. Where I am expecting a decision not to arrive
fairly quickly I am surprised because it has arrived within three
months, so it does vary within the Immigration Service how quickly
they respond, but it does take time. The other problem for a lot
of these women is accessing good legal aid immigration solicitors.
Often they end up with solicitors who are charging them and when
they come to organisations like ours and we say you can actually
get legal aid they then realise they are paying for something
they should not be. Then they are referred to another solicitor
who may take on the case. A lot of the good solicitors are finding
it very difficult because they are constrained by the Legal Services
Commission in terms of the hours they are allowed to do. One of
the things that we are having to now do is to help those solicitors
in preparing statements and help collecting their evidence because
they do not have enough hours in which to do that work and there
is a huge burden on the voluntary sector now to do that aspect
of the work.
Margaret Moran: Thank you, that is very
helpful so there is a delay before you get to the application
and a delay afterwards? I cannot remember whether we asked Southall
Black Sisters for a note on that but if we did not could we possibly
ask for one.
Martin Salter: I think that would be
a good idea.
Mrs Cryer: Martin is going to ask the
last two questions and then if Keith Vaz wants to come in he can
do.
Q314 Martin Salter: Jagdeesh, you
talked about the response of the Foreign Office and the difficulties
of dealing with the police in the Punjab and elsewhere. I have
to say I was involved with the Ian Stillman case and it was a
nightmare for us dealing with the police there and it was quite
high-level Foreign Office involvement and a lot of pressure put
on by the faith groups. I suppose the question I have got to put
to you is, are there not two problems: the first is getting the
police here to recognise it seriously and to prioritise it; and,
secondly, of course, we are dealing with some police networks
in the Punjab and elsewhere which have a tacit approval of the
tradition of forced marriage and, I am going to be honest here,
a degree of corruption, and therefore even with the best will
from the Foreign Office and the Metropolitan Police it is going
to be the devil's own job in some circumstances getting the police
in a foreign jurisdiction with an acceptance of forced marriage
to take these thing seriously?
Jagdeesh: No, I would not agree
entirely with what you have said; I would agree 50%. Offloading
the problem purely onto Punjab police maladministration and malpractice
is not a sufficient answer.
Q315 Martin Salter: Fair enough.
Jagdeesh: I think the Foreign
Office from basic first principles has demonstrated it beautifully
in the Lucie Blackman case in Japan where they picked up her case
within a matter of hours and started to bang on the door of the
Japanese Prime Minister, no less, as did Robin Cook and Jack Straw,
and indeed our PM took up her case at the G8 Summit, no less.
The Lucie Blackman case is a powerful case study that I have continued
to highlight as a comparator to what did not happen in Surjit's
case. In the Lucie Blackman case, you had the case of a British
citizen who disappeared in Japan. We had our Government (commendably
or opportunitistically) pick up her case and start to demand not
an investigation but a reinvestigation by the Japanese police.
They demanded that not from the head of the Japanese police, they
demanded that from the Japanese Prime Minister, and that kind
of formal pressure had massive effect. You saw the very next day
after Tony Blair and the Foreign Minister and the Foreign Office
started banging away, as you did with the Gillian Gibbons case
in the Sudan, the Japanese police, instructed by the Japanese
Government, re-open that case. It was re-opened and excellent
results emerged. What you did not see in Surjit's case at any
point unfortunately, was our PM or our Foreign Minister giving
Surjit's case anything like the degree of priority they were ready
to give to the Kirsty Jones case in Thailand, the Lucie Blackman
case in Japan and indeed the Ian Stillman case and the Peter Bleach
case in India where legal rules and legal convictions in the Indian
courts were circumvented for Peter Bleach and Ian Stillman (although
it was a suspected miscarriage of justice) to bring them back
here based on direct approaches by the British Foreign Minister.
The critical issues about the Foreign Office are these: at no
point in Surjit's case or indeed in any other case, and indeed
even now in the Manjit Kular case, have they applied those substantive
levels of formal representation on cases of Asian women who have
disappeared in India. They have not applied the same levels even
for men who are from Asian communities who happen to be caught
up in jails or be victims of deaths in India. It is something
that they seem to be paralysed on, unwilling to do, and yet they
are prepared to do this, I have to say this with great pain, for
Gillian Gibbons in Sudan, and you saw the bombastic statements
that were being made even to the extent of economic sanctions.
We simply have zero effort being made by the Foreign Office in
these cases. I will give you a further example. It took me five
years—five years—of campaigning, letter writing and
parliamentary questions to get a face-to-face meeting with Jack
Straw. Lucie Blackman's family got a meeting with Tony Blair and
Robin Cook within five days of her disappearing. What a contrast.
I had to pressure, prod and frustrate the Foreign Office for five
years to remind them, "Have you at any point made any formal
representation about the disappearance of a British citizen, ie
Surjit, to the Indian Government? Have you done that at a formal
level?" The British Foreign Office official turned round
and said to me, "Jagdeesh, you have caught us out there.
We have not done that at all." Surjit disappeared in December
1998. It was not until 2003, after a lot of banging and questioning,
that the Foreign Office instigated a proper letter to the Indian
Ministry of External Affairs to say a British citizens has disappeared
in mysterious circumstances.
Q316 Martin Salter: What difference
did that Foreign Office letter make? Did that start to free things
up?
Jagdeesh: No it did not because
the letter was sent and there was no attempt to follow that up.
There was no attempt to follow that up. It was just a ceremonial
exercise to satisfy us as a family. We also got a meeting with
Jack Straw, no less, five years late though it was. Jack Straw
was forthcoming to say to me, "Jagdeesh, we have made mistakes
on your sister's case and I want to personally turn this around
now." He promised me no less that, "I'll get on to the
Indian Prime Minister literally tomorrow on the phone and I'll
be raising your sister's case." I was left positively aghast
that he was making all these promises to me now. He also said,
"I agree with your recommendation that Surjit's case should
receive a senior level investigation in India which ties up with
the investigation here and I will be pressing for that through
the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation." Those promises
were made to me in front of several people including MP John McDonnell
in November 2003 I walked away from that meeting cautiously optimistic.
It is 2008 now and I have not heard anything from Jack Straw's
office ever again, even after a letter of reminder about that.
So promises were made but never fulfilled. What has happened is
the Foreign Minister and the Foreign Office have left an extremely
bitter taste in my mouth certainly. In all cases of South Asian
woman who happen to have disappeared abroad in India or Pakistan,
they seem to display this unexplainable chronic paralysis and
moreover plain double standards. I just cannot understand why
other than it amounts to some degree of discrimination. Why are
a different set of pressures being applied in one case and why
are those not consistently applied in other cases? Why? Those
were the simple questions we put to Jack Straw and he was both
nervously and embarrassingly accepting of that. He said, "There
is no explanation for that. We need to clean up our act."
He even promised to introduce a system of monitoring, he said,
which we had recommended and given to him in a draft form, so
that every case is monitored by ethnicity so that we can assess
what types of cases by ethnicity get what kind of service. I am
sure that has not been implemented. I do not know.
Q317 Martin Salter: Thank you, Jagdeesh,
that is very helpful. My final question is to Imran. I want to
get underneath the reasons for why your family were so keen that
you married your younger first cousin. Was it entry clearance
into the UK? Was it about consolidating family monies and inheritance
and land? What were the reasons or was it just a done deal?
Imran: As soon as I was born and
she was born, it was already done, as soon as I was born.
Q318 Martin Salter: I know, but why?
What were their motives for trying to pair you off?
Imran: For her to get over to
the UK.
Q319 Martin Salter: Just to get her
into the UK, so you were basically a ticket to get her into the
UK.
Imran: Yes basically and it was
more to keep the family within the family so she could come and
get an education, she could eat properly, she could get what she
wants to get in life. I did not have a say because as soon as
she was born, when I was ten we got engaged. When I was born they
had already promised me to my uncle's daughter so at the age of
ten I was engaged.
| 
