% of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in England

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Nick-la
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Joined: July 19, 2003
Posts: 3675
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Posted: June 28, 2004 - 12:41 PM
Post subject: % of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus in England

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,2763,1248691,00.html

Death threat couple still running - 11 years on

Known 'honour killings' could be tip of the iceberg as special police unit plans to re-examine more than 100 deaths over past 10 years

Rosie Cowan, crime correspondent
Monday June 28, 2004
The Guardian

It is not much of a contingency plan, but it is all Jack has. If they burst through the door, knives and machetes in hand, he will fend them off for 10 seconds, hopefully long enough for his wife, Zena, to jump out of a window. That way, one of them might live.
The couple have decided not to have children. "A child would slow us down," said Jack. "We have no friends. We trust no one. We can't even have a pet. Any attachment would put us in more danger."

Jack and Zena have been on the run for 11 years. They have lost count of the number of times they have moved house - more than 30, Jack thinks. They have had four different names each. Their real names and details have been wiped from public records. They can never contact their families again. They have just about deleted every memory of their former lives.

They are not spies or gangland criminals. Their crime was to fall in love, and now they are being hunted by Zena's family, which is intent on carrying out a so-called honour killing. The phrase is used to define the murders of women (and sometimes their partners) judged to have disgraced their families by defying cultural rules. The true extent of honour crimes in the UK is only starting to emerge.

At a conference at the Europol headquarters in The Hague last week Commander Andy Baker, Scotland Yard's head of homicide, revealed that police in London are now being approached by an average of two women or girls a week who fear being forced into marriage against their will.

There are an estimated 5,000 honour killings a year worldwide according to human rights groups, with about 12 thought to happen in the UK. But Mr Baker said: "Without doubt this is only the tip of the iceberg."

A unit he set up last year is now re-examining 117 cases in the UK over the past 10 years to ascertain how many were honour killings. The unit is also looking at prevention, and helping people like Jack and Zena. As he tells his story, Jack glances around constantly, eyeing suspiciously the mothers and toddlers who play nearby in a sunny cafe courtyard. Jack and Zena met in the summer of 1992, when she was 21, he 30. He was a working-class Yorkshireman. She was from a wealthy Kashmiri family, promised since birth to another man.

They knew they would have to run away to be together. The following January, Zena lowered her belongings out of a window in knotted bedsheets and crept past her sleeping relatives in the dead of night.

Initially, Jack did not realise what he was up against. At the first bed-and-breakfast they stopped at, he rang her family to let them know she was safe.

Her brother took the phone and swore he would make it his life's mission to track them down and stuff their dismembered bodies into binbags. "You're a walking corpse," he told Jack.

That was only the beginning. When Jack eventually contacted his own family, he discovered his mother had been attacked and his sister had received a phone call threatening that she and her children would be burned in their beds.

The couple married on the Isle of Wight in 1993. Things did not improve. Zena's father said that as far as he was concerned, she died the day she left home. Her family tracked them everywhere. "Asian connections are like a huge fishing net thrown over the whole UK," said Jack.

"Tread on one line and it will quiver right back to her parents."

At first, the police brushed off their story in disbelief. Eventually they were taken seriously and provided with new identities. Detectives were waking up to the fact that so-called honour killings, previously assumed only to take place in Muslim families, were also happening among Sikhs and Hindus.

Many families hire bounty hunters, paying them thousands of pounds to find and kill their daughters. Police told Jack and Zena there were almost certainly bounty hunters after them. Jack is adamant that the government, police and social services need to do more. He wants a free helpline to be set up and advertised in schools, universities, stations and anywhere else where girls and women in Zena's situation might see it.

He is also offering to tour the country's police forces, advising officers how to deal with potential victims. His checklist would include: listen to them, don't contact their families, don't try to mediate - and safety and confidentiality are paramount.

"Every officer should be warned about the deviousness and ruthlessness of these families," he said. "The vendetta passes from generation to generation and they will stop at nothing."

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jane_ca

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Joined: Aug 26, 2003
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Posted: June 28, 2004 - 06:21 PM

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Last edited by jane_ca on June 28, 2004 - 06:22 PM; edited 1 time in total

jane_ca

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Posted: June 28, 2004 - 06:21 PM

I heard similar story in Canada.

A young India-Canadian woman fell in love with a guy (of indian origin) who came from a lower "class" family by eatern indian standard. So her uncle sent someone killed that guy. i don't remember all the details any more. The young woman her life was also in danger because "she disgraced" the whole family.......anyway for reason's canadian mountie couldn't intervene for international convention on case' jurisdiction.

Immigrants bring in postive as well as negative things into new country. Integration for first generation is a difficult one. But it seems, in general, it gets better with the second generation. Because their children receive education in new country.