Að neyða hring á fingur

Ég verð ábyggilega seint talinn "feministi" í þeim skilningi orðsins sem virðist hvað algengastur í dag, en samt sem áður tel ég mig jafnréttisinna og er ákafur fylgismaður réttinda einstaklingum til handa.  Því þótti mér dálítið sláandi að lesa dálk á vef Times, en þar er fjallað um nauðungarhjónabönd í Bretlandi.  Sömuleiðis er að finna frétt á vef blaðsins um sama málefni.

 Grípum fyrst niður í dálknum sem er skrifaður af Camillu Cavendish:

"WHERE HAVE ALL the feminists gone? Equality campaigners seem terribly busy wrangling over flexible working and who puts the rubbish out.

Few have much to say about women who have been transplanted into this country from cultures that regard them not as individuals but as possessions. Few have commented on 12-year-old Molly Campbell, abducted on Friday from the Hebrides and smuggled to Pakistan. Her mother’s decision to shelter in one of the most remote parts of the British Isles proved to be no protection against a father who was determined to assert his power, and possibly to force her into marriage. No doubt this little girl is torn by conflicting loyalties. Yet her abduction raises fundamental issues of equality that cannot be swept under the carpet to protect “cultural sensitivities”. "

"There is a new front in the fight for women’s freedom. It is in Bradford and in East London, where 90 per cent of the forced marriage cases handled by the Foreign Office originate. A team of diplomats at the British Embassy in Islamabad rescued 105 women last year. Yet the numbers in trouble are far higher. The charity Reunite, which helps victims of child abduction, dealt with 307 new cases involving 454 children last year, up by a fifth from the year before. Pakistani cases are increasing the most. A Foreign Office report on Bradford and Tower Hamlets points to the increasing numbers of young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis reaching marriageable age in this country. The mean age of the UK population is 40; the Pakistani community’s is 26 and the Bangladeshi community’s is 24.

Few are prepared to fight on this new front. There is the MP Ann Cryer and the actress Meera Syal; there are those who run refuges and helplines, such as the Southall Black Sisters and the Karma Nirvana Asian Women’s Project; and a few, lone, courageous individuals who have taken matters into their own hands. In the past year I have come across three teachers who have helped teenage pupils to escape from actual or threatened violence at home. Each seems to have been the only person the girls could confide in. Each has found the girl a refuge and tried to help her to start a new life. "

"The Government dropped plans to make forced marriage illegal in June, after the Muslim Council of Britain cautioned that it could be “another way to stigmatise our communities”, although it is not a practice supported by Islam or any other world religion. In July a Metropolitan Police commander reported that the decision not to make forced marriage a criminal offence had been taken by some community groups to mean that “it must be all right”.

Forcing defenceless women into marriage is not all right. It is rape, for a start. But nor is it the only problem faced by women who live closeted by male relatives and vulnerable to abuse. Government “outreach” does not extend to women who are illiterate and cannot read leaflets printed in Urdu. Some women cannot go to English language classes because their husbands, fathers, brothers will not give permission. I know of one Sure Start centre that has coaxed deprived Bangladeshi women to attend by presenting itself as a health centre. Their menfolk were reluctant to let them near a door marked “education”, but could be persuaded to let them seek health advice for their precious sons. "

"The cultural questions are complex. But the feminist cause is clear. Every woman should have the right to move freely. No woman should suffer violence. Every woman should be able to say “no”. This is every bit as important as Edwardian emancipation, a cause for which some — remember? — gave their very lives."

Dálkinn í heild má lesa hér.

Ég sé svo sem ekki nauðsyn þess að ákalla feminista sérstaklega, þetta er að sjálfsögðu mál sem allir þeir sem hlynntir eru almennum mannréttindum hljóta að berjast gegn og vekja athygli á, jafnt feministar sem aðrir.  En er búið að ofnota "rasistastimpilinn" svo, að það þykir ekki "PC" að vekja athygli á þessu?  Það sem meira er, hér er verið að ræða um Bretland, það er ekki verið að tala um vandamálið í Pakistan, Bangladesh eða öðrum þeim ríkjum sem svipað er ástatt um.

Í frétt Times má lesa þetta:

"AUGUST and September are the peak months for organisations working with the victims of forced marriage.

As the school holidays draw to a close, many young Britons who were taken for what they believed to be family holidays in Pakistan and India are realising that their trip had an altogether different purpose.

“Many children will be missing from class when school starts next week. They will have been married overseas. Others will be back, but they will be married,” said Jasvinder Sanghera, of the Karma Nirvana Asian Women’s Project in Derby, which deals with an average of seven new cases of forced marriage a week.

Forced marriage is not a religious or cultural issue — no leading world religion supports it. It is an issue of basic human rights. Its victims, some as young as 12 or 13, are compelled to marry when they do not want to. The practice frequently involves abduction, threats to kill, assault, false imprisonment, emotional blackmail, rape and child abuse. And all at the hands of close family members. "

"Most cases in Britain involve Muslim families, although the practice is not restricted to one religious or ethnic group. At least a third of known victims are under 16 and about 15 per cent are male.

Those who refuse to take part are often threatened with death, and it is acknowledged that many of the 12 so-called honour killings of young women in Britain every year are linked to the practice.

Those who endure it, or escape, do not always fare much better: the suicide rates among young Asian women in the UK are three times the national average. "