Crimes of the Community Honour-Based Violence in the UK

Crimes of the Community HONOUR-BASED VIOLENCE IN THE UK by James Brandon and Salam Hafez 2008 CENTRE FOR SO C I A L C O H E S ION Crimes of the Community: Honour-based violence in the UK by James Brandon and Salam Hafez Centre for Social Cohesion A Civitas Project Centre for Social Cohesion Clutha House 10 Storey’s Gate London SW1P 3AY Tel: +44 (0)20 7222 8909 Fax: +44 (0)5 601527476 Email: [email protected] www.socialcohesion.co.uk Director: Douglas Murray The Centre for Social Cohesion is a Civitas project CIVITAS is a registered charity: No. 1085494. Limited by guarantee. Registered in England and Wales: No. 04023541 © Centre for Social Cohesion, January 2008 All the Institute’s publications seek to further its objective of promoting the advancement of learning. The views expressed are those of the authors, not of the Institute. Crimes of the community: Honour-based violence in the UK All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-903386-64-4 Printed in Great Britain by The Cromwell Press Trowbridge, Wiltshire Contents Introduction 1 Ch A P T E R 1 Origins of honour 3 Introduction 3 Sexual honour 3 n Origins of an idea 3 n Honour today 4 Advantages of honour 5 Common ways in which honour can be damaged 6 Consequences of losing one’s honour 8 Ch A P T E R 2 Forced marriage 9 Introduction 9 Motives for forced marriage 12 Abuses related to forced marriage 15 n Physical violence 16 n Psychological and emotional violence 17 n Isolation, imprisonment and withdrawal from school 18 n Kidnapping and being forced to travel abroad 19 Abuses after a forced marriage 21 n Rape 21 n Abandonment 22 n Depression, self harm and suicide resulting from forced marriages 24 Ch A P T E R 3 Honour-based Domestic Violence 27 Introduction 27 Forms of honour-based violence 28 n Defying parental authority 28 n Acting ‘western’ 31 n Control by in-laws 33 n Drug and alcohol abuse 34 n Economic factors 35 Ch A P T E R 4 Honour Killings 37 Introduction 37 How many honour killings in the UK? 37 Honour killings among people of South Asian origin 39 Profiling South Asian killings 41 n Killings by close relatives and in-laws 41 n Women’s involvement in murder 44 n Role of religion and caste 45 n Killings by extended families 47 n Pre-planned attacks 50 n Killing of children 51 n Killings abroad 53 Kurdish honour killings 54 n Kurdish women killed for becoming ‘western’ 55 n Killers arriving from Kurdistan/Kurdish women being killed abroad 57 n Ritualised nature of Kurdish honour killings 59 Arabs and others 60 Men as victims of honour-killing 63 Ch A P T E R 5 Female Genital Mutilation 65 Introduction 65 Origins of the practice 66 Muslim attitudes to FGM 67 Attitude of other religions 69 FGM in the UK 71 n African 72 n Arab 74 n Kurdish 75 n South Asian 76 n Other groups 77 Ch A P T E R 6 Barriers to change 78 Introduction: the reinforcing of traditional attitudes 78 Community attempts to block change 79 n Imported wives and husbands 79 n Segregation and self-segregation 82 n Islamist groups 85 n Community and religious leaders 88 Deterrents to women fleeing abuse 94 n Women being tracked down by community based groups 94 n Violence and threats against women’s groups and refuges 97 Difficulties of getting religious divorces 98 n Islamic marriages 98 n Sikh divorces 101 Government failures 102 n Local government/schools failures 103 n Government employees failing to uphold law 104 n ‘No recourse to public funds’ rule 107 Wrong government partners/advisors 111 n Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) 111 n Southall Black Sisters 112 Policing failures 114 Summary: Barriers to change 118 Ch A P T E R 7 Breaking the tradition 119 Introduction 119 Explaining changing attitudes 122 n Increased exposure to alternative cultures and lifestyles 122 Role of NGOs 125 n Working with children: challenging traditions 126 n Working with adults: changing attitudes 128 n Working with women 128 n Working with men 131 Role of progressive religious groups 131 Government successes 134 n Growing police awareness 134 n Foreign and Commonwealth Office 137 n Legislation 139 Ch A P T E R 8 Recomendations: how the government can accelerate change 141 n Low impact 144 n Medium impact 145 n High impact 145 Ch A P T E R 9 Conclusion 147 Appendix 150 Bibliography 158 Acknowledgements 159 Introduction In recent years, honour crimes have received an increasing amount of interest from the media, the police and politicians. This has been fuelled by the extensive coverage of the murder of several young Kurdish and Pakistani women by their families. This growing public concern has been largely welcomed by women’s groups and has prompted the government to take steps to tackle these crimes. However the media’s focus on honour killings and, to a lesser extent, forced marriages and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has obscured the true scale of honour-based crime. Honour killings represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of violence and abuse perpetrated against women in the name of honour. This study shows that honour killings, domestic violence, forced marriage and FGM are not isolated practices but are instead part of a self-sustaining social system built on ideas of honour and cultural, ethnic and religious superiority. As a result of these ideas, every day around the UK women are being threatened with physical violence, rape, death, mutilation, abduction, drugging, false imprisonment, withdrawal from education and forced marriage by their own families. This is not a one-time problem of first-generation immigrants bringing practices from ‘back home’ to the UK. Instead honour violence is now, to all intents and pur- poses, an indigenous and self-perpetuating phenomenon which is carried out by third and fourth generation immigrants who have been raised and educated in the UK. This report focuses on four aspects of honour-based violence: n Forced marriage n Domestic violence n Honour killings Some of the most frequently cited killings have been those of Rukhsana Naz, a 9-year old woman of Pakistani origin in Derby in 998, Heshu Yones, a 6-year old Kurdish girl in North London in 2003, and Banaz Mahmod, a 20-year old Kurdish woman in South London in 2006. The Guardian: ‘Love, honour and obey – or die’, by Jason Burke. October 8 2000. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,37974,00.html 1 HONOUR-BASED V IOLENCE IN T H E U K n Female Genital Mutilation Many of these problems are common to all societies. Domestic violence and ‘crimes of passion’ exist worldwide. However, honour crimes differ significantly from other outwardly similar crimes. While typical incidents of domestic violence involve men using force against their wives, honour-based abuses regularly involve a woman’s own sons, brothers and sisters, as well as members of their extended family and in-laws. Similarly, the pre-planned and ritualised nature of much of this violence (particularly in the case of honour-killings and FGM) makes such behaviour distinct from other ad-hoc forms of violence against women. This study explains how and why many British women, and in- deed many men, are told that they are not allowed the right to be independent, to have control over their own bodies and who are being denied, often through force, an opportunity to choose their own destiny. The report concludes with recommendations on what the government can do to prevent these abuses. 2 Ch A P T E R 1 Origins of honour Introduction Honour is a fluid concept which has been widely interpreted by different societies, cultures and classes throughout history to pro- mote behaviour which is seen as beneficial to the community. At various times honour has been equated with attributes as di- verse as bravery or cunning, strength or wisdom, vengefulness or mercy. In all societies, honour has both a private and a public as- pect. On one hand it describes an individual’s ‘self-respect’; how a person sees himself and his relative value in society. But at the same time, measures of honour also dictate the extent to which society accepts a person’s self-worth and help determine the level of status and material benefits which it accords him as a result. Sexual honour The form of honour dealt with in this study arises from ideas that the reputation and social standing of an individual, a family or a community is based on the behaviour and morality of its female members. Like other forms of honour, this concept does not exist in a vacuum but rather as a central part of a complex social structure which governs relationships between different families, genders and social units within a given society. n The origins of an idea Anthropologists have suggested a number of reasons for the de- velopment of ideas that the honour of an individual or a group is determined by the behaviour of women. Many speculate that this behaviour evolved because early man wanted to be sure that the children he helped raise, gathered food for and protected were carrying his genes. The most obvious way for him to do this was to ensure that ‘his’ woman did not have sex either immediately prior to or after his coupling with her. Therefore, researchers sug- gest, men who controlled their women came to be seen as strong, high-status leaders of society; able to prey on the sexual partners 3 HONOUR-BASED V IOLENCE IN T H E U K of other men but keeping their own women chaste and apart.2 Others have argued that a sexualised form of honour devel- oped because early societies viewed women as a form of prop- erty which could be traded for other commodities.

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