ANCHOR: In Britain, women who have been the victims of forced marriage are...(More)

ANCHOR: In Britain, women who have been the victims of forced marriage are calling on the United Kingdom's government to make the practice a crime. Here's more on the story. STORY: When she was 12 years old, Shazia Qayum's best friend at school was murdered by her father for dishonoring her family. At 15 Shazia's mother told her that she was being taken out of school and to Pakistan to be married to a man she had never seen before. [Shazia Qayum, Team Leader, Karma Nirvana]: "I came back from school and my mother presented me with a photograph of my first cousin and told me she arranged my marriage in Pakistan. She also told me no was not an option." For that whole year Shazia said she was kept at home and felt like a prisoner. Shazia also felt let down by the government and school authorities. [Shazia Qayum, Team Leader, Karma Nirvana]: "The surprising thing in that whole year is that no one asked the question where I was. No one from education welfare. No one from social services and no one from the police." Shazia eventually went ahead with the marriage. She was seventeen. At eighteen Shazia ran away from home and has not seen her family since. She now lives in Derby in the north of England. Shazia Qayum's case is not unique and the issue of forced marriage in many conservative Asian communities in Britain is not unique either. Shazia says the only way parents will be discouraged from forcing their children to marry is if the practice is made a criminal offence. Wayne Ives who heads up the UK government's Forced Marriage Unit says criminalizing the practice would do more damage than good. [Wayne Ives, Director, Forced Marriage Unit]: "The reason why, is that when we speak to the victims at the time, if we even mention that the police might be involved, very often their response is not to get the police involved because what they don't want to do is get their family arrested." The numbers of British Asians being forced into marriage are on the rise. Official statistics go back three years as the Forced Marriage Unit was set up in 2005. The Unit handles case work in the UK and overseas. Last year the Forced Marriage Unit handled 400 cases where it directly intervened on the behalf of British nationals. [Wayne Ives, Director, Forced Marriage Unit]: "The vast majority of cases we deal with is South Asian. One of the reasons behind that is to some extent it reflects Britain's ethnic minority population. But it also reflects, we knew there was a problem within certain South Asian communities, so we targeted them." [Siddhartha Dubey, Reporter]: "The South Asian community is quite segregated from the mainstream white community. This is Normanton Road and as you can see all the shops here are owned by members of the South Asian community. Just a couple of streets up is another busy commercial area. Those shops are everything but South Asian. The community here is also quite conservative. So much so that when the government tried to put this poster up in schools talking about the issue of forced marriages, the school's administrations rejected the poster." The lack of awareness or access to information that led Jasvinder Sanghera to found Karma Nirvana, a relief organisation in Derby. When she was 15 Jasvinder's was told she was to marry a man of her parent's choice. Jasvinder's response was 'no' and as a result she says she was abused by family members. That abuse led Jasvinder to run away from home at the age of 16. [Jasvinder Sanghera, Founder, Karma Nirvana]: "Of all the thousands of cases that we have seen in the UK, we see very few prosecutions. So here we have an area of criminal activity where people are not being held to account. Now you would not turn a blind eye to an area of activity in the UK like rape. Forced marriage and honor-based crimes should be dealt in exactly the same way." In April a UK government inquiry into forced marriages and honor killings will report its findings. Jasvinder and Shazia at Karma Nirvana are instrumental in writing the report. They want the report to force schools to make forced marriage material available to students so that young people are aware of their right to choose.(Less)