UK Pakistani jailed for beating and keeping wife a slave

[Anthea]

Guardian

Briton who made wife live like slave is first to be jailed for domestic servitude

A man who treated his wife as a slave and subjected her to an existence of “violence, intimidation, aggression and misery” has been jailed following a pioneering trial which saw him become the first Briton convicted of forcing their spouse into domestic servitude.

Prosecutors and police said they hoped the case of Safraz Ahmed, a 34-year-old mechanic from south London who abused, demeaned and taunted Sumara Iram over a two-year period, could see more potential victims come forward.

Ahmed subjected Iram to “physical and mental torture” after she came to the UK from Pakistan in late 2012 for an arranged marriage into which she entered willingly and with initially high hopes, Woolwich crown court was told.

He struck his wife, threw tins of cat food at her, sent streams of abusive and demeaning text messages, and once told her to jump in front of a vehicle or into a river, the judge, Christopher Hehir, was told.

In her victim imapct statement, Iram said: “Because the beatings happened regularly and for such small things I felt worthless. I was not allowed to do what I wanted to do, I was never allowed to step out of the house alone and I was not allowed to make friends, which means I was never allowed to socialise; I felt like their prisoner.

“I cooked, I cleaned, I washed, I ironed, looked after other people’s children and when things were not to the liking of the family I was punished by beatings. I felt that there was only one purpose of my life and that was to serve this family.”

Ahmed admitted enforced domestic servitude, for which he was jailed for two years, and assault causing actual bodily harm for breaking her nose, for which he received an eight-month term. The sentences will run concurrently, meaning he could be free within 12 months, less than half the time that Iram lived under his control.

“This is a ground-breaking case which demonstrates how far we have come in tackling modern-day slavery,” said Damaris Lakin, a lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service. “We believe this is the first conviction in England and Wales of a husband for holding his wife in servitude.”

Lakin said prosecutors were “committed to working with the police and other partner agencies to bring the perpetrators of modern day slavery to justice and support victims to help them through the prosecution process and beyond in the hope that they can rebuild their lives”.

The Home Office’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Bernard Silverman, has estimated that in 2013 there were between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK. This includes includes women forced into prostitution, domestic staff, and workers in fields, factories and fishing.

There are no specific estimates available of how many spouses are subjected to domestic servitude.

The judge described a seemingly paradoxical case in which the spouse arriving from Pakistan was well-educated and from a liberal background, but arrived in the UK to find her British husband say her only purpose was to care for him and his family. Iram, who has an MA in Islamic studies, cooked, cleaned and carried out other domestic duties in days often lasting from 5am to midnight.

Iram attended court to see her former husband jailed, sitting opposite the glass-walled dock where he sat. She glanced at him occasionally, but showed no emotion. Police have asked the media to not print images of her lest she face retribution.

Outlining the prosecution case, Caroline Haughey said the pair had married in Pakistan in 2006 when Iram, now 29, was a teenager. After a delay caused by her studies and visa issues she flew to London in late 2012, anticipating “a harmonious household where she was an equal”. Instead, Ahmed “told her he had married her so she could look after his mother and his home,” she said.

Haughey described the physical and mental abuse Ahmed meted out, which she said had left Iram with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The court was told her husband once said to her: “You are scared of being alone, but you are not scared of my beatings.” On another occasion, when she begged his forgiveness, Ahmed said he found her “disgusting”, and that she should jump in front of a car or into a river.

“It was an atmosphere of fear, constantly punctuated by violence,” Haughey said.

Ahmed had once hit his wife for, as he viewed it, failing to tend properly to his sister, the court heard. If the family told her to “stand on one leg” she should do it without question, she said.

Iram came to police attention in February 2014 after neighbours saw her outside the family home in just a dress and flip-flops, before her husband dragged her back inside by her hair.

Officers realised she had a broken nose and black eye and arrested Ahmed, but they released him the next day when Iram signed a document asking for him to be freed, saying she was not under pressure.

Following the conviction police accepted they could have removed Iram then, sparing her another 18 months with her husband.

“There are always lesson that the police can learn to improve their practices,” DS Pal Singh of the Metropolitan police said. “With the benefit of hindsight, this case could have perhaps been better placed for the victim if it had started in February 2014, when she first came to police attention.”

She eventually left the house in August 2015 after an incident where she tried to kill herself. She phoned the police, who persuaded her to go to a refuge.

Polly Harrar, the founder of the Sharan Project, which helps victims of forced marriages from south Asian communites, said the conviction suggested there were large numbers of victims living similarly restricted lives in the UK.

“This case will open the door to more prosecutions,” she said. “This woman was restricted in terms of going outside the home. She was brought here to be a slave in effect. This is just the tip of an iceberg. We have dealt with many similar cases. This case is really good for raising awareness of the problem.”

Offering mitigation for Ahmed, Cathy Ryan said he changed his mind during the gap between their marriage in Pakistan and her arrival in the UK.

He was frustrated at the marriage, Ryan said, adding: “It’s right to say that Sumara bore the brunt of this frustration.”

Singh, who led the investigation after Iram finally fled the family home in Charlton, south-east London, said it was likely many more such cases existed, and appealed for victims to contact police. “We can help, and as the judge said today, the courts do not accept cultural differences for offending,” Singh said. “Neither should the police.”

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016 ... faces-jail

[Anthea]

The Home Office’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Bernard Silverman, has estimated that in 2013 there were between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK. This includes includes women forced into prostitution, domestic staff, and workers in fields, factories and fishing.

In my valued judgement, the numbers are considerably higher among the Muslim community and sadly such lifestyles are commonplace.

There are several reasons as to why such crimes generally go unreported:

Many of the Muslim ladies bought to UK as wives are often poorly educated with little or no grasp of English

Do not know of English law and their rights to protection under such laws

Often the only law they know anything about or have access to is Sharia Law

(shamefully UK has permitted the setting up and running of Sharia courts)

Due to to the ladies isolation and lack of any social network or support, they are unaware such violent behaviour is totally unacceptable in UK

In point of FACT, so commonplace is this behaviour that those ladies, who do have access to other females within their communities, may be hard-pressed to find ladies who have not been at the receiving end of violence and abuse

Note that I wrote within their communities. As many Muslim ladies have limited English, or forbidden to go alone, they seldom if ever make non-Muslim friends

Simply put:

Many Muslim ladies do not know it is against UK law for their husbands to beat them

Most Muslim ladies are also, totally unaware that if they leave a violent husband they are entitles to a large portion of his money and estate

[Anthea]

Just found on Twitter:

There's a saying: “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it's impossible to go there twice.” Been to Saudi once and I'd prefer hell.

[Anthea]

New York Times

The Dirty Old Men of Pakistan

Karachi, Pakistan — IN the world we live in, there is no dearth of pious men who believe that most of the world’s problems can be fixed by giving their women a little thrashing. And this business of a man’s God-given right to give a woman a little thrashing has brought together all of Pakistan’s pious men.

A few weeks ago, Pakistan’s largest province passed a new law called the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act. The law institutes radical measures that say a husband can’t beat his wife, and if he does he will face criminal charges and possibly even eviction from his home. It proposes setting up a hotline women can call to report abuse. In some cases, offenders will be required to wear a bracelet with a GPS monitor and will not be allowed to buy guns.

A coalition of more than 30 religious and political parties has declared the law un-Islamic, an attempt to secularize Pakistan and a clear and present threat to our most sacred institution: the family. They have threatened countrywide street protests if the government doesn’t back down.

Their logic goes like this: If you beat up a person on the street, it’s a criminal assault. If you bash someone in your bedroom, you’re protected by the sanctity of your home. If you kill a stranger, it’s murder. If you shoot your own sister, you’re defending your honor. I’m sure the nice folks campaigning against the bill don’t want to beat up their wives or murder their sisters, but they are fighting for their fellow men’s right to do just that.

It’s not only opposition parties that are against the bill: The government-appointed Council of Islamic Ideology has also declared it repugnant to our religion and culture. The council’s main task is to ensure that all the laws in the country comply with Shariah. But basically it’s a bunch of old men who go to sleep worrying that there are all these women out there trying to trick them into bed. Maybe that’s why there are no pious old women on the council, even though there’s no shortage of them in Pakistan.

The council’s past proclamations have defended a man’s right to marry a minor, dispensed him from asking for permission from his first wife before taking a second or a third, and made it impossible for women to prove rape. It’s probably the most privileged dirty old men’s club in the country.

Some of us routinely condemn these pious old men, but it seems they are not just a bunch of pampered religious nuts. In fact, they are giving voice to Pakistani men’s collective misery over the fact that their women are out of control. Look at university exam results; women are hogging all the top positions. Go to a bank; there is a woman counting your money with her fancy nails. Turn on your TV; there is a female journalist questioning powerful men about politics and sports.

One of these journalists recently was grilling a famous mufti opposed to the bill. Bewildered, the mufti said: Are you a woman, or are you a TV journalist? She was professional enough not to retort: Are you a mufti, or just another old fart?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Three decades ago, most Pakistani women who had paid jobs worked at menial tasks, and the others were confined to traditional professions like medicine or teaching or, occasionally, law. There was a small and brave women’s movement. Women were writing novels and making movies, but they were few in number. Now they are flying planes, heading companies, policing the streets, climbing mountains and winning Oscars and Nobel Prizes. There are millions of women across the country running little beauty parlors from their homes, employing other women and gaining a measure of independence.

But for every bank teller, there are still millions of women who are farmhands or house help. For every TV journalist, there are many more women who live in half-slavery, scrubbing and cleaning, and shouldering the heavy burden of protecting and raising their kids.

Let’s not just blame the mullahs and muftis. Misogyny is way older than any religion. Even people who have never seen the inside of a mosque or the Sufis who want to become one with the universe wouldn’t think twice before treating a woman as something between a pest and a pet goat.

Some members of Parliament stayed away when this bill was being passed in the Punjab assembly. They probably represent a majority. Some of us even call ourselves feminist. “See, I have never stopped my sister from going to school, never given my girlfriend a black eye. That makes me a feminist, right? But we must protect our families. You don’t want a family-loving feminist man going around with a GPS tracker, do you?”

What really scares the so-called feminist men is that a lot of women are actually quite bored with talking about being a woman. They talk about their work. A film director talks about bad actors. A development worker talks about idiotic funding patterns. A maid talks about her cellphone and the quality of detergents.

There’s a woman in my neighbourhood who walks fast. She is always carrying two kids in her arms. Not infants but 3-, 4-year-old sturdy kids, heavy weights. She walks fast. Probably you have to walk fast when you are carrying two kids. She doesn’t expect a lift from the many cars passing by. She can’t afford a cab. She is walking toward her bus. Always with the two kids in her arms and a bag around her shoulder. She gives Quran lessons at people’s homes.

I don’t think all those pious men, or anyone else, can tell that woman with the two kids how to walk her daily walk. If someone asks her how it feels to be a woman in this society, she’d probably answer, “Can’t you see I’m working?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opini ... p=cur&_r=0

Anthea: This does explain why this abuse continues even in UK and other parts of EU