London honour killings 'six a year'
Multiculturalism and Muslims- the gifts that keeps on giving
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Honour crimes in London are on the increase, with police recording four a week since last summer.
They believe an honour killing is being committed every two months in the capital, a CPS London conference heard.
Across the country police are reviewing the disappearances and deaths of 122 young Asian women - 81 from London - over the past 10 years to establish whether they were killed for bringing shame on their families.
The CPS and police will also ask coroners throughout the country for details of cases where they suspect that Asian women committed suicide following intimidation or harassment.
Metropolitan Police Commander Andy Baker, Head of Homicide Investigation, (above) told the Honour Crimes Conference that the suicide rate among Asian women aged between 15 and 25 was three times the national average. For the 25 to 35 age group it was twice the average.
Delegates heard that most honour crimes in the UK involve South Asian families but cases have also featured Middle Eastern, West African, Turkish, Bosnian, Kosovan and Roma families.
In a keynote address, CPS London's Chief Crown Prosecutor Dru Sharpling (below) said honour crimes were "disgraceful" and went beyond an issue of culture.
She told the conference held in London in December: "If it is nothing but culture it gives the crime a legitimacy that it does not deserve or merit.
"This is primarily a crime against women. Honour crimes are crimes of violence which contain wholesale human rights abuses."
The criminal justice system counted as nothing unless it protected the people it served, she stressed.
"Honour crimes are corrosive and the victim deserves protection, and the criminal law must be designed to do just that.
"And if they are not protected; if they are kept away from the agencies that can help; if the issue is submerged in our society, then that seems to me to give a green light to the perpetrators."
In a democratic society the existence of any group of individuals whom the law could not apparently touch was unacceptable, she added.
Speakers at the conference included a woman who as a teenage schoolgirl ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage.
Jasvinder Sanghera was 14 when her family showed her a photograph of a Sikh man they said she would marry. Abused emotionally and physically, she fled to Newcastle two weeks before the wedding.
As a result her parents refused to speak to her, saying she was dead in their eyes.
Seven years later her elder sister Robina committed suicide by setting herself alight after being trapped in an arranged marriage.
Jasvinder, who said she still receives threats from relatives for bringing shame on them, now runs a refuge for Asian women in Derby, handling 40 calls a week.
Delegates learned that each year, a specialist unit at the Foreign Office handles around 250 cases of British women forced into marriage, rescuing between 60 and 70.
Honour crimes in London are on the increase, with police recording four a week since last summer.
They believe an honour killing is being committed every two months in the capital, a CPS London conference heard.
Across the country police are reviewing the disappearances and deaths of 122 young Asian women - 81 from London - over the past 10 years to establish whether they were killed for bringing shame on their families.
The CPS and police will also ask coroners throughout the country for details of cases where they suspect that Asian women committed suicide following intimidation or harassment.
Metropolitan Police Commander Andy Baker, Head of Homicide Investigation, (above) told the Honour Crimes Conference that the suicide rate among Asian women aged between 15 and 25 was three times the national average. For the 25 to 35 age group it was twice the average.
Delegates heard that most honour crimes in the UK involve South Asian families but cases have also featured Middle Eastern, West African, Turkish, Bosnian, Kosovan and Roma families.
In a keynote address, CPS London's Chief Crown Prosecutor Dru Sharpling (below) said honour crimes were "disgraceful" and went beyond an issue of culture.
She told the conference held in London in December: "If it is nothing but culture it gives the crime a legitimacy that it does not deserve or merit.
"This is primarily a crime against women. Honour crimes are crimes of violence which contain wholesale human rights abuses."
The criminal justice system counted as nothing unless it protected the people it served, she stressed.
"Honour crimes are corrosive and the victim deserves protection, and the criminal law must be designed to do just that.
"And if they are not protected; if they are kept away from the agencies that can help; if the issue is submerged in our society, then that seems to me to give a green light to the perpetrators."
In a democratic society the existence of any group of individuals whom the law could not apparently touch was unacceptable, she added.
Speakers at the conference included a woman who as a teenage schoolgirl ran away from home to escape an arranged marriage.
Jasvinder Sanghera was 14 when her family showed her a photograph of a Sikh man they said she would marry. Abused emotionally and physically, she fled to Newcastle two weeks before the wedding.
As a result her parents refused to speak to her, saying she was dead in their eyes.
Seven years later her elder sister Robina committed suicide by setting herself alight after being trapped in an arranged marriage.
Jasvinder, who said she still receives threats from relatives for bringing shame on them, now runs a refuge for Asian women in Derby, handling 40 calls a week.
Delegates learned that each year, a specialist unit at the Foreign Office handles around 250 cases of British women forced into marriage, rescuing between 60 and 70.
posted by jillosophy at 5/22/2007 10:59:00 AM
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