Posts Tagged ‘victims’
Published: July 25th, 2013 Updated: December 1st, 2021
Nada Al-Ahdal must be one of the bravest people alive today. This 11-year-old Yemeni girl managed to escape the fate that befalls so many girls of her age: a forced marriage.
Her story is harrowing. Nada, one of eight children, lived with her uncle in Saudi Arabia since she was three. According to Nada, her uncle, Abdel Salam al-Ahdal, was the only thing standing between her and life as a child bride.
Abdel Salam told NOW:
“When I heard about the groom, I panicked. Nada was not even 11 years old; she was exactly 10 years and 3 months. I could not allow her to be married off and have her future destroyed, especially since her aunt was forced to marry at 13 and burnt herself. I did all I could to prevent that marriage. I called the groom and told him Nada was no good for him. I told him she did not wear the veil and he asked if things were going to remain like that. I said ‘yes, and I agree because she chose it.’ I also told him that she liked singing and asked if he would remain engaged to her.”
According to NOW, the groom then ended the engagement. When he told Nada’s parents that he did not want to marry their daughter anymore, they were disappointed since they would no longer receive the bride price.
Despite her tender age, Nada is no stranger to arranged marriages. Her 18-year-old sister has been engaged several times, and her maternal aunt committed suicide by self-immolation after being forced to marry an abusive man. Even though Nada made her preferences very, very clear, her parents tried to marry her off again. That’s when Nada made this haunting video.
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/nadas-escape-from-forced-marriage-highlights-child-marriage-epidemic.html#ixzz2a2y9xMR1
Tags: child brides, child exploitation, Child Marriage Act, criminalisation, cultural stereotypes, forced marriage, halo project, honour based violence, marry, pregnant, rape, victims, violence
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Published: May 23rd, 2013 Updated: December 1st, 2021
The number of women and girls in Afghanistan imprisoned for “moral crimes” has risen by 50% in the past 18 months, a rights group says.
Human Rights Watch says many are jailed for running away from home, often from forced marriages or domestic violence. Others are behind bars as a result of alleged adultery, in truth often involving rape, it said. The government should “get tough on abusers of women and stop blaming women who are crime victims”, said HRW.
It said 600 women and girls were now imprisoned for “moral crimes” – the highest since the US-led overthrow of the Taliban 12 years ago.
About 110 of those were girls under 18.
Virginity tests
Human Rights Watch’s alert comes just three days after angry scenes in the Afghan parliament forced a halt to a debate about reinforcing a law to prevent violence against women. The law banning violence against women, child marriages and forced marriages was passed by presidential decree in 2009, but did not gain MPs’ approval.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22614536
Tags: abusive, bride, Child Marriage Act, criminalisation, forced marriage, haloproject, marriage, marry, murder, pregnant, victims
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Published: May 23rd, 2013 Updated: May 23rd, 2013
Officials of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Police have ended the drama over the Ablekuma forced marriage.
The Police stormed the house and picked up everybody – the man in the centre of the controversial marriage, her 13-year-old wife and the runaway elder sister, their mother and father. The 13-year-old school girl was forced to marry a 25-year-old man originally scheduled to marry her 18-year-old elder sister.
The older girl had refused to marry the man and run away on the day of the marriage. In her place however, her 13-year-old sister was forced to marry the man at a matrimonial ceremony held at Ablekuma in Accra.
But in a dramatic turn of events…. click here to read more: http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201305/106475.php
Tags: controversial, forced, forced marriage, halo project, haloproject, marry, police, run away, school girl, victims
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Published: May 13th, 2013 Updated: May 13th, 2013
Melbourne girls as young as 15 are being forced into marriages overseas, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
There were three examples of forced marriage in one Melbourne high school, a migrant support worker told the inquiry.
Girls are being married off for money and for their husbands to obtain visas, Hiba Casablanca from the Shakti Migrant and Refugee Women’s Support Group said.
She told the federal inquiry into slavery and human trafficking about a 15-year-old Melbourne girl who thought she was going on holidays to Asia with her family, but was married off.
‘She had been taken on holiday by her family and was unaware of what would be happening to her,’ Ms Casablanca told the inquiry.
The girl’s husband is now trying to obtain a spousal visa to come to Australia.
Australian authorities have been told the girl, who was born overseas, is now 18 years old.
Read more: http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=870952
Tags: abusive, forced marriage, haloproject, honour based violence, marriage, marry, psychologically, slavery, victims
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Published: May 13th, 2013 Updated: May 13th, 2013
SURAT: Two lovers from Naldhari village of Valiya taluka in Bharuch died on Friday during treatment after consuming pesticide. The deceased lovers were hurt after forced marriage of the girl with another youth and committed suicide.
Sangita Vasava, 23, had developed relationship with neighbour Paresh Vasava, 25, few years back. Both residents of Naldhari village have promised each other to get married after permission from family members. However, Sangita’s family wanted her to get married to another youth in a neighbouring village. Sangita was forced to marry to another youth in April and after staying for few days with her husband she came to hear parents home as part of ritual.
Read more: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/surat/Lovers-end-life-after-girl-forced-to-marry-another-youth-in-Surat/articleshow/20017895.cms
Tags: forced, haloproject, honour based violence, marriage, suicide, victims, violence
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Published: May 13th, 2013 Updated: May 13th, 2013
MELBOURNE, May 9 (Bernama) — Girls as young as 15 are being forced into marriages overseas, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.
A migrant support worker told the inquiry of three examples of forced marriage in one Melbourne high school, the Australian Associated Press reports.
Girls are being married off for money and for their husbands to obtain visas, Hiba Casablanca from the Shakti Migrant and Refugee Women’s Support Group said.
She told the federal inquiry into slavery and human trafficking about a 15-year-old Melbourne girl, who thought she was going on holidays to Asia with her family, but was married off.
“She had been taken on holiday by her family and was unaware of what would be happening to her,” Casablanca said.
The girl’s husband is now trying to obtain a spousal visa to come to Australia. Australian authorities have been told the girl, who was born overseas, is now 18 years old. In another example, a 21-year-old woman was married in exchange for money, Casablanca said.
Read more: http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v7/wn/newsworld.php?id=948550
Tags: forced marriage, haloproject, holiday, honour based violence, marry, victims, visa
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Published: May 7th, 2013 Updated: December 1st, 2021
In front of 300 villagers, Halima’s father shot her in the head, stomach and waist – a public execution overseen by local religious leaders in Afghanistan to punish her for an alleged affair. Halima, aged between 18 and 20 and a mother of two children, was killed for bringing ‘dishonour’ on her family. Police in the northwestern province of Badghis said Halima was accused of running away with a male cousin while her husband was in Iran, and her father sought advice from Taliban-backed clerics on how to punish her. “People in the mosque and village started taunting him about her escape with the cousin,” Badghis provincial police chief Sharafuddin Sharaf told AFP. “A local cleric who runs a madrassa told him that she must be punished with death, and the mullahs said she should be executed in public.
The father killed his daughter with three shots as instructed by religious elders and in front of villagers. We went there two days later but he and his entire family had fled.” Amnesty International said the killing, which occurred on April 22 in the village of Kookchaheel in Badghis province, was damning evidence of how little control Afghan police have over many areas of the country.
“Violence against women continues to be endemic in Afghanistan and those responsible very rarely face justice,” Amnesty’s Afghanistan researcher Horia Mosadiq said.
“Not only do women face violence at the hands of family members for reasons of preserving so-called ‘honour’, but frequently women face human rights abuses resulting from verdicts issued by traditional, informal justice systems.”
Police in Baghdis, a remote and impoverished province that borders Turkmenistan, said Halima had run away with her cousin to a village 30 kilometres away. Her father found her after 10 days and brought her back home, where clerics told him he must kill her in front of the villagers to assuage his family’s humiliation. A Badghis-based women’s rights activist said he had seen video footage of Hamila’s execution, which AFP was not able to obtain.
Read More: http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/international/04-May-2013/afghan-father-guns-down-daughter-over-affair
Tags: forced, halo project, haloproject, honour, justice, killed, killing, marriage, marry, murder, perpetrators, preserving, religious, victims, violence, women
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Published: May 7th, 2013 Updated: December 1st, 2021
EMC news – Aruna Papp never questioned the beatings she received from her husband and her father until she moved to Canada.
Papp, who grew up in India and was married by the age of 17, began working as a short-order cook at York University after emigrating in the ’70s.
After finding a second job as a women’s locker room attendant, she secretlybegan taking sociology courses in the building next to where she worked. After coming home one night and learning from her daughter that her father had instructed her husband to beat her “because that’s the only language she understands,” she escaped and lived in her car for two weeks before finding a bachelor apartment. Since then she has founded the South Asian Family Services and works with the York Regional police to educate them on cultural differences and honour based violence.
The author of Unworthy Creature: A Punjabi Daughter’s Memoir of Honour, Shame and Love, Papp told the group at an Algonquin College workshop on April 23 that telling her story was tough, but it became necessary to help women gain equal rights.
The workshop, In the Name of Honour: Responding to victims of Honour-Based Violence and Forced Marriage, was hosted by the college’s victimology program, the Ottawa police victim crisis unit and the Department of Justice. The workshop marks the fourth year of the college program. It’s a one-year graduate certificate course that takes grads from social work, policing and nursing. The program was created four years ago. Each year, the speaker panel is made up of people who have been victims of violent crime, along with police officers, counsellors and social workers who have worked in various parts of the country’s judicial system.
Read more: http://www.emcbarrhaven.ca/20130502/news/College+tackles+’honour+killings’,+Police+see+need+for+education
Tags: abusive, constant abuse, forced, forced marriage, high risk, honour, honour based violence, marry, murder, physical, victims, violence
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Published: April 29th, 2013 Updated: April 29th, 2013
Foreign Office reveals cases from Italy, Holland, Australia, Indonesia and Nigeria, with one in five victims a man, and ages ranging from five to 87.
Britain’s forced marriage victims are being coerced to marry in more far flung places and at a much younger age than previously thought.
Last year more than half of the 1,500 cases the Foreign Office dealt with were connected to families in Pakistan, but cases also came from Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Italy, Holland, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria and Iraq. One in five victims was a man. Ages ranged from five to 87.
In each case of forced marriage, there are often several perpetrators. Yet almost no one is prosecuted in the UK. There is general agreement that forcing a person to marry against their will is a human rights abuse and that the authorities should do everything possible to protect victims from forced marriage. But that’s where the consensus ends. The UK Government is considering whether to make forced marriage a new criminal offence and opinions are divided about the potential risks and benefits.
Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-forced-marriage-victims-much-younger-than-previously-thought-7608813.html
Tags: coerced, criminalisation, cultural insensitivity, forced marriage, Foreign Office, halo project, honour, honour based violence, racism, victims, violence
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