Murder in the Name of Honor (24 page)

Caneze's friend, Shahnaz Hussain, told reporters that the community was frightened that the murders would be labelled an honour killing – there was a fear that if it was labelled as such, then some people would feel that it was in some way justified.

A local police constable and Family Liaison Officer, Steve Cox, who knew Caneze's family said, ‘There are men here in East Lancashire who are prepared – and I've seen it first hand – to subject their female children in particular to psychological abuse, physical abuse, forced marriages, and keeping them prisoner in the house.' Barry Khanan, Caneze's brother, said:

You can't bring the old way of life from Pakistan to England and expect it to work. And I don't think people should give any reason or excuse to this kind of action. It's cold-blooded murder. There was no honour involved ... He was so selfish, and pig ignorant that he couldn't see what he was doing to his family. He was closing himself off from his family. He was isolating himself, all because he wanted things his way. I'm the man; I shall have it my way. And yes it does come from his background, where he's brought up to believe that he is dominant. He's the male, he's the husband, he's the father. That right or wrong, things should be done his way. But where's the honour in murdering five innocent people?
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PC Cox agreed:

Honour is completely the wrong word. It is a control murder. That's what these are. It is not honour crime; it is ‘control crime' and fear of losing that control.

It really is beyond belief that he felt this – the five graves – was the answer to losing control of his family. What is honourable
about this? Caneze had done nothing wrong. On the contrary, she was doing so much that was good. Every one of those children there are testament to that, and they have all suffered because of one man and his completely twisted view on life. And I've got to say, that whatever twisted multi-version there was, it is about subjecting your own children to complete and utter brutality, whether it is physical or psychological, just because they've made you feel ashamed. Women are dying and being brutalized in this situation many times throughout Britain at the moment. Cultural sensitivity is absolutely no excuse for moral blindness, and there's too much fannying about going on on both sides, from both communities, and as long as that remains the situation, then young women are going to keep dying. It's as simple as that.

Another of Caneze's friends and a colleague, Mussurut Zia, said:

This had something to do with all of us. It was Caneze who died in the end, but it had something that impacted on all of us. And we all had to rethink our positions within our families and within our homes. The heart of it is that it is a patriarchal society, a male-dominated society, and that dominance is extended to women. Women are chattels to be done with as the owner sees fit, and this type of behaviour that men indulge in is perpetuated from generation through to generation, so that each generation following on is going to think that is the right thing to do, and that is the only way to live.

This wasn't the only case in the UK to involve the murder of innocent children. Thirty-two-year-old Uzma Rahan arrived in Manchester in 1992, thanks to an arranged marriage. She adopted an increasingly western lifestyle, making friends independently and dressing less conservatively. Her husband, Rahan Arshad, who worked as a taxi driver, found her behaviour increasingly
frustrating. Uzma told her friends that she was afraid of her husband, that she would be the victim of an ‘honour killing', saying, ‘Count the days before he kills me.'

Soon afterwards Arshad killed Uzma by hitting her twenty-three times with a baseball bat. He then beat his three children to death. At his trial, Arshad told the court that he had been angered by his wife's decision to wear tight jeans and tops. He said, ‘It wasn't right for a mother and someone who came from Pakistan to change the way she dressed all of a sudden. It wasn't right at all.'
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On 14 May 2008, IKWRO held a conference in London on honour-based violence and honour killings. Diana Nammi, head of IKWRO, said, ‘Our policy is to never turn back any woman. In 2007 we rescued seventy women and two men. There are many more who need our help whom we never get to hear about. There are lots of missing women and many self-harm to try and escape their families.'

According to 1992 figures, South Asian women are three times more likely to commit suicide than white women in the UK. Some of these suicides may be murders disguised as such and in some cases the harassment by relatives/in-laws for alleged failings encouraged victims to commit suicide. Many figures relating to so-called honour crimes in the UK are unreliable as they do not account for cases where women have been taken to Pakistan and elsewhere to be murdered.

Nammi also said:

These women are all victims of family members, fathers, brothers, mothers and sisters. Bounty hunters and contract killers are paid to track them down. Once on they run they are never safe. One cab driver that knew a victim's family took her home instead of to a refuge. There is still a great deal of work to be done. One sixteen-year-old who recently ran away from a forced marriage said: ‘If your family doesn't get you then the
British government will.' Her father was arrested and held for two hours before he was released without charge.

Nammi argued that there needs to be better awareness and support from the UK government. Women on the run from their families should not be sent home, as has so often been the case. At the very least, the family should not be told until the woman is safe and her case can be properly investigated. It is hard for many people to understand that these women's worst enemies are those who are closest to them.

A recent case that won a great deal of attention was that of the NHS doctor Humayra Abedin, aged thirty-three, who was held captive by her family in Bangladesh for four months while they plotted a forced marriage to a Muslim man she had never met.

A friend of Dr Abedin, who had lived with her in East London, raised the alarm after receiving a text. ‘Please help me. My life is in danger. They have locked me in house. My job is at stake. They are making my life hell,' the message said.

Dr Abedin had a Hindu boyfriend in London, and it was this that had angered her Muslim family.

She was tricked into flying to Bangladesh in August 2008 when her family told her that her mother was seriously ill. Once she arrived she was allegedly beaten, drugged and held against her will. The doctor's boyfriend, a forty-four-year-old Bangladeshi software engineer, said, ‘Her family told her they'd prefer her to die than return to London.'
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The High Court issued an injunction under the new Forced Marriage Act (2007), demanding that Dr Abedin be allowed to return to Britain. Though the Act is not enforceable in Bangladesh it was hoped that it would place pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities. It worked. In December, Judge Syed Mahmod Hossain ordered Dr Abedin's parents to return her passport, driver's licence and credit card.
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In the west, the UK is at the moment leading the way in the fight against so-called crimes of honour and the Forced Marriage Act is a step in the right direction. It is aimed at protecting the victims of forced marriages and preventing these marriages from taking place. Courts will be able to make orders to protect the victim or the potential victim and help remove them from that situation. Anyone breaching the orders can, and most likely will, be arrested.

Bridget Prentice, a minister at the Ministry of Justice said, ‘This legislation sends out a clear message that forced marriage, a breach of an individual's basic right to choose who and when they marry, is not acceptable in our society. It will enable us to make better use of civil court remedies to provide protection to those placed in this intolerable position.'

The joint Foreign and Commonwealth and Home Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) was launched in January 2005 as the UK's ‘one stop shop' for developing government policy on forced marriage, co-ordinating outreach projects and providing support and information to those at risk. The unit handles approximately 250–300 cases per year, fifteen per cent of which involve men. Officers from the unit have travelled abroad on many occasions to try and trace people who they think may have been abducted. In the first nine months of 2008, the FMU was contacted by 1,308 members of the public who alerted them to suspected cases.

Although the FMU sees cases from around the world – including East Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe – the majority are from South Asia. Approximately sixty-five per cent of cases involve families of Pakistani origin and twenty-five per cent involve families of Bangladeshi origin. Around a third of cases dealt with by the FMU involve children, some as young as thirteen. The unit also assists reluctant sponsors (those forced into marriage and subsequently forced to sponsor a visa application) and has dealt with over a hundred of these cases since May 2006.

IKWRO was involved in the consultation process in the run-up to the passing of the Forced Marriage Act. Another important aspect of IKWRO's work is raising awareness in the community. Many women are unfamiliar with British law and are unaware that help is available. ‘We have got to get the message out. There is help, there are organizations that can offer support as well as long-term counselling, shelter and safety,' Nammi said.

Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt, also speaking at the 2008 IKWRO conference, said, ‘Many victims don't realize that the police have different views to those in their own country. Those officers who are fearful of breaking cultural rights need to put these fears to one side.'

The Crown Prosecution Service now has specialist lawyers who deal with honour crimes and have been rolling out training on the issue since the IPCC ruling on police failures in the case of Banaz Mahmood. They are also establishing an inter-agency approach to honour crimes, so the CPS will work with voluntary organizations such as IKWRO.

There is still much to be done. At the time of writing there is no standard police or governmental policy for dealing with so-called honour crimes and this has left many women very vulnerable. Nammi, along with the police and other agencies, believes that one of the best things the government could do would be to scrap or amend the ‘no recourse to public funds' rule. This rule ensures that non-EU immigrants cannot claim various benefits for the first two years that they are here. This creates a problem in that a woman who leaves her violent household has no support from the state, and would find it very difficult to get work, especially if her English is poor and she cannot get any references. Nor can she return to her country of origin, as her life may be at risk if she is believed to have brought shame on her family, for example, by divorcing. So women on the run are forced to stay in unsecured guesthouses, are not entitled to council accommodation and have no say in where
they live. In one case, a woman was re-housed just two streets away from her family.

Sarah Pepper, a Child Protection Co-ordinator for Islington in North London, said that cases of honour-based violence affecting teenagers were increasing in number. The dangers are sometimes acute. One extreme example of this was an incident in Manchester on 28 June 2001. Faqir Mohammad, a sixty-nine-year-old Pakistani man who had lived in the UK for thirty years, returned from Friday prayers at the local mosque to find his daughter Shahida in her bedroom with her boyfriend. The boyfriend leapt out of the window. Mohammad went and fetched a knife, put his daughter in a headlock and stabbed her nineteen times in the stomach. At his trial he told the court that he was a ‘strict Muslim' who wanted all of his daughters to have arranged marriages in Pakistan.

Although Pepper stated that in her experience Bangladeshi and Kurdish teenagers between fifteen and eighteen years of age were at most risk, there is currently no official audit, so the true number of cases is not yet known. ‘Often they [women in danger] don't realize that what is normal for them is extraordinary for us. On those occasions where they do come forward, we need to be able to react immediately.' They have dealt with several adult sisters who have run away in order to ask Child Protection Services to try to save their younger sisters whom they've left behind with their abusive parents.

Pepper stated that children must be isolated while their case is investigated. There should be no interviews with the immediate family and community leaders to start with, and local people should not be used as interpreters. Pepper made the point that this is impossible without the invaluable co-operation of voluntary organizations.

Most mistakes are made in the early stages of an investigation. Previously, child protection officers have sometimes argued that
it's worse to separate young girls from their family than allow them to be forced into marrying, ‘because they can always divorce later'. In one instance where this logic was applied, a sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl returned to the child protection officer after being badly beaten when she was sent home.

In an emotional address, Detective Inspector Hyatt told the 2008 IKWRO conference that ‘we need also to look beyond the immediate perpetrators'. He was speaking with particular reference to Banaz Mahmood. Detectives had tried to prosecute two men accused of helping to hide Banaz's body in their back garden. The trial had collapsed because of a lack of evidence. Banaz's cousin Dashti Babaker, aged twenty-one, and his friend Amir Abbas, aged thirty-one, were alleged to have joined the plot to please community elders.

The point is that the wider community must be made aware that if they know about an honour killing and by keeping silent about their knowledge they assist the perpetrators, then the police will come after them too. Two other men involved in Banaz's murder, Mohammad Ali and Omar Hussein, who fled to Iraq, are still wanted. Hyatt remains determined to see them brought to justice.