Magic Statistics

The British government is stepping up its campaign to raise public awareness of the issue of forced marriages, but schools in areas where the practice is believed to be prevalent refuse to go along.  They’re afraid of offending parents.

See the campaign poster at right.  Some parents may well find it offensive, but I think that’s part of the idea.

A paper from the department released by the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee found that in Luton cards had been issued rather than posters while in Derby most schools were unaware of the poster produced by the forced marriage unit.

“In Birmingham, the poster had not been displayed as schools felt that the graphics are ‘too hard-hitting’.

“Some schools in Leeds are displaying the posters but others are concerned that they may offend some of their parents,” the paper said.

A report in The Guardian has more details on the circumstances surrounding forced marriages.

Forced marriage is often used to "correct" some kind of behaviour that a family is not happy about, including drug and alcohol use, promiscuity, having a boyfriend from another ethnic background, or the fear that a teenage daughter has become too "westernised". It is inextricably linked to bullying, suicide (rates among young British Asian women are three times the national average) and "honour" violence, including murder. There have been a number of horrific cases in recent years. Banaz Mahmod, a 19-year-old Kurdish-born woman from south London, had been forced into marriage when she was 16, but left her husband and started a relationship with another man. She told police that her father had threatened to kill her and gave them a list of names of local men she feared he would hire to do the job, but they didn't listen. Her body was found buried in a garden in Birmingham; she had been strangled with a shoelace and packed into a suitcase. In January, a coroner ruled that Shafilea Ahmed, 17, from Warrington, had been murdered - she was found next to a river in 2004 - but nobody has been charged. The inquest was told that she had tried to run away before, telling a local youth support service that she feared her parents would force her into a marriage (they have denied this) and, on a trip to Pakistan, drank bleach in an apparent suicide attempt.

Headteachers prefer to avoid confrontations and other unpleasantnesses with upset parents rather than help children in their care avoid being forced to marry against their will.  Don’t they care about their pupils?  How many more British children and young people have to disappear or be killed before the cowardly headteachers join the fight against this cruel custom?

h/t: Michelle Malkin

Previous related posts:

• Thousands of British school children forced into marriage
• Fight the culture of forced marriages and honour killings
• UK Muslim leader “certain” Shafilea victim of honour killing
• Inquest into death of Muslim girl who refused arranged marriage

Justice investigates possibility of investigation — Yukon News, 12 March

Say what?

Last summer, the Australian government launched a radical and controversial welfare reform, requiring parents on welfare to take proper care of their children.  If they failed to do so, welfare payments would be diverted to a responsible person in the family or local community.

Although the policy was criticised as a paternalistic violation of the rights of welfare recipients, it has already resulted in noticeable improvements in children’s diets.

STRICT restrictions on welfare payments in Aboriginal communities have led to a dramatic rise in the consumption of fresh food, a development that has intensified Labor support for a key aspect of the Northern Territory indigenous intervention.

A survey of store managers in remote Aboriginal communities has found spending on nutritious food has increased dramatically - with six in 10 stores recording more turnover.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said she had commissioned the early survey - well before the 12-month review promised by the Government - to see if the forced quarantine of Aboriginal welfare was working.

She told The Australian she was convinced that income quarantining was working to deliver fresh food to indigenous children in the Territory.

The reform was implemented under former prime minister John Howard, whose government was later defeated by the Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.  Some members of Mr Rudd’s government oppose forced income quarantining, but these findings make it more likely the policy will remain in place as is.

h/t: Australian Politics

Previous related posts:

• Please take our children out of here
• Australia implements radical welfare reform
• Australia plans to link welfare and personal responsibility

Dylan sings the American gospel classic by the great Thomas A. Dorsey.  Recorded live in France, June 1989.

h/t: Expecting Rain 

That’s a headline Canadian Anglicans never expected to see.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t refer to statements by any minister of the Anglican Church of Canada.  No, it fell to a foreign Anglican clergyman to speak the truth about our "human rights" commissions.

Reverend Father Nicholas Sykes (at right) of St Alban’s Church of England, George Town, Grand Cayman, warned his countrymen against adopting a proposed Human Rights Commission by pointing out the oppression that a similarly constituted commission has brought upon Canada.

“In [Human Rights Commission] the defendant’s right to due process is withdrawn. They reach judgments on the basis of no fixed law and by simply agreeing to hear a case, they tie up the defendant in bureaucracy and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers, while the person who brings the complaint, however frivolous, stands to lose nothing.”

Mr. Sykes said over half all of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions “hate crime” cases have been brought by one person who was a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Rev Sykes is one of several Cayman Islands clergy opposed to constitutional proposals brought forward by the governing People’s Progressive Movement (PPM).  He spoke at a public meeting earlier this week at the Family Life Centre in George Town.

The estimated 85 attendees heard from the Leader of the Opposition Hon McKeeva Bush and his United Democratic Party (UDP), who organised the meeting. Mr Bush told the gathering how the ruling People’s Progressive Movement (PPM’s) proposal to enshrine the Bill of Rights in the Constitution would fundamentally alter life in the Cayman Islands.

“The Bill of Rights in particular is going to seriously affect the Christian church and the Christian schools,” he said.

Another speaker mentioned the recent decision to fine the Anglican bishop of Hereford £47,345 and require him to attend re-education sessions after he refused to hire a non-celibate homosexual as a youth officer in his diocese.

The people of Cayman Islands will vote on the constitutional proposals in a referendum scheduled to be held in May, although the PPM government says it is willing to postpone the vote to allow more time for public discussion.

Fr Sykes has been minister at St Alban’s, Grand Cayman, for almost 25 years.  He was the subject of a lengthy profile by Cayman News Net Online in September 2006, whence the photo at the top of this post.  The website of the Church of England in the Cayman Islands includes several articles about the “apparent clash between rights and freedoms” and other interesting material.

h/t: The intrepid Ezra Levant, who headlined his post "They're laughing at us in the Cayman Islands".

Actually, I don’t think they’re laughing at Canada so much as looking at us and fearing for their own future. Canada used to be a beacon of hope and freedom to the world.  Now, thanks to our human rights commissions, we’re becoming a bad example.

Previous related posts:

• Unelected “experts” destroying credibility of human rights
• Anybody know if the Human Rights Commission was in the news recently?
• Ezra Levant faces down the “human rights” cops