The Cruel Custom of Forced Marriage

Marriage in multicultural Britain

The norm for people living in western societies is to find their own partner(high divorce rates!),still seen as a commitment for the rest of your life.
For people with their origin in India,Iran,Iraq,Afganistan,Sri Lanka,Bangladesh,Pakistan,Somalia and Sudan an arranged or forced marriage is often the only acceptable form of marriage.
Forced Marriage
A forced marriage is a marriage conducted without the consent of one or both parties. This means the parents arrange the marriage and force one or both of the partners to marry against their will. Often the parents invites the child on a holiday to their home country and then force them to marry when they cannot escape.
Forced marriage affects men and women from all over the world, and across many cultural groups..The British Royal Family even has a history of it, as did many members of the British aristocracy in the past. Most victims are young women between the ages of 14-25. Forced marriages violate human rights and are a way of oppressing women by controlling their behavior and sexuality.
Example: Fatima ,a 15 -year –old girl, traveled to Turkey last year ,with her parents, to attend the wedding of a male cousin that she never meet. When she arrived in the small Turkish village where her parents had lived before immigrating to Austria, the Vienna high school pupil’s enthusiasm quickly turned to panic when she learned that she was the bride. Her father beat her until she consented, so she married a dark-haired teen chosen by her parents.
Fatima turned to Orient Express, a Vienna non-profit agency of mostly Turkish women that has helped 28 victims of forced marriage in recent months. Fatima and thousands of other Muslim girls living in Austria and neighboring Germany are fighting back thanks to the emergence of support groups that help them find lawyers ,housing and new identities.
Both Austria and Germania have recently begun to address the issue.
In September, Austria’s center-right government announced that police and prosecutors would investigate suspected forced marriages even when the victims are too afraid to testify.
In Germany, bills have been introduced in Parliament that would toughen laws that allow immigrant men to bring mail-order brides from their native countries and give prison terms of six months to five years for parents who force daughters into marriage. Some observers say the sudden interest in forced marriages is the result of about 48 “honor killings” in Germany since 1996by male relatives who have slain wives and sisters by bullets ,knives and even gasoline for fleeing a forced marriage or adopting Western life.
These crimes have shocked the German public, and also the Turkish community.
Back in Austria ,the honors killings in Germany have alarmed women seeking refuge at Orient Express.
Orient Express recently started a media campaign in Vienna schools to make Muslim teens aware of the risk of taking a family vacation in their parents’ homeland.
Reason for parents forcing their children to marry are the preservation of family honor, the desire to strengthen family links ,family pressures, and the prevention of relationships considered unsuitable. Parents usually feel they are acting right, but are destroying their family.

Arranged marriage.
An arranged marriage occurs when parents or the eldest male in the family chooses a spouse for a young boy or girl. I some countries, it is the man who chooses his wife, often paying a fee—in cash or goods—to the bride’s family.
Proponents say arranged marriage is more successful than marriages based on romance because the bride and groom begin with few expectations. They also argue that because parents arrange the marriage ,both husband and wife are more willing to give it their best effort rather than break up after a few conflicts.
In the UK arranged marriages have much lower divorce rate than love marriages(doesn’t mean that these are happy),In the Asian society a divorce is often seen as a social outcast and failure .Moreover, a women leaving her violent husband is seen as having brought shame upon the family. So ,the low divorce rates may be result of many people stuck in unhappy marriages, not being able to separate. However ,the fear of staying single is minimized. Everybody ends up married.
The most important factor in a successful arranged marriage is to have understanding parents, who are acting in the child’s best interest ,rather than holding up the status of the family.
Arranged marriages ,however ,can last, but should be made a free decision for the youth.