Forced marriage chainsThe 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

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