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<p>A Pakistani woman who tried to flee her arranged marriage killed her husband and 12 of his relatives using poisoned milk, authorities said.</p> <p>Police claim Asiya Bibi laced her husband’s milk last week, and that after he didn’t drink it, the spiked liquid was used to make lassi, a yogurt drink, which she served to him and his extended family, the BBC reported.</p>

Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) recorded over 1,400 victims in 2016, up from 1,200 the previous year. The Cyprus Mail reports that Pakistan accounted for 612 of the cases logged by the FMU, Bangladesh 121, India 79, Somalia 47, Afghanistan 39, and Saudi Arabia 16. Most forced marriages were conducted abroad with “only” 157 potential or actual forced marriages taking place in the Britain. “When you get figures like this, the first reaction is, ‘this is absolutely horrendous’,” commented Aneeta Prem, founder of the Freedom Charity. “But the positive thing is people feel that they’re able to report it.” However,...

Violence against women is endemic in Afghanistan with cases of “honour” killings, rape, domestic violence and forced marriage well-documented and well-known. But women and girls who have been displaced from their homes during decades of conflict seem to be even worse off, according to the latest edition of Forced Migration Review, which looks at Afghanistan's displaced people and their prospects after foreign troops withdraw this year. Displaced Afghan women are especially vulnerable to exploitation and violence because of their often reduced circumstances, according to a piece by Camille Hennion, project director at the Kabul-based Samuel Hall research group. ... A...

A new Afghan law will allow men to attack their wives, children and sisters without fear of judicial punishment, undoing years of slow progress in tackling violence in a country blighted by so-called "honour" killings, forced marriage and vicious domestic abuse. The small but significant change to Afghanistan's criminal prosecution code bans relatives of an accused person from testifying against them. Most violence against women in Afghanistan is within the family, so the law – passed by parliament but awaiting the signature of the president, Hamid Karzai – will effectively silence victims as well as most potential witnesses to their...

"Forced marriage is probably the last form of slavery in the UK." — Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Northwest England. More than a dozen Muslim clerics at some of the biggest mosques in Britain have been caught on camera agreeing to marry off girls as young as 14. Undercover reporters filming a documentary about the prevalence of forced and underage marriage in Britain for the television program ITV Exposure secretly recorded 18 Muslim imams agreeing to perform an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, between a 14-year-old girl and an older man. Campaigners against forced marriage -- which is...

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PLANTATION, Fla. (WSVN) -- A Middle Eastern South Florida resident was arrested Friday for allegedly burning her teenage daughter with a heated knife. Read more and watch video report.

It's not coming to America, it's here. And those who should be on the vanguard of this gender terror, the feminists, are dangerously silent. Sandra Fluke, call your office, you fraud. "Forced Marriage in America: many women don't know their rights, fear to claim them" Trust Law, Nov. 19, 2012 NEW YORK - To many in the United States, forced marriage sounds like an ancient and alien practice, something that might happen in remote corners of India or Pakistan, not in the heart of 21st century America. But it is indeed occurring in the United States, and “it is a...

According to a report by the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, forced marriage primarily affects young Muslim women. Of those forced into marriage 83.4% were Muslim, nearly a third were 17 or under, while 40% fell between the ages of 18 and 21. German Federal Family Affairs Minister Kristina Schroeder put it succinctly when she remarked “Whoever marries children against their will … is doing them violence.” Many of the victims were threatened with violence and even death. As for the parents of these young women, the most common country of origin is Turkey at 44%, followed by a...

A new study has revealed that thousands of young women and girls in forced marriages seek help every year in Germany. The vast majority of victims come from Muslim families, and many have been threatened with violence or even death. The numbers involved are much higher than previously suspected. More women and girls living in Germany are being forced into marriage under the threat of violence than previously thought, according to a new study released by the German government on Wednesday. In 2008, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 3,443 people sought help at counseling and information...

The Government should criminalise forced marriages after figures suggested there are up to 8,000 cases a year, MPs said today. Schools are also not doing enough to protect pupils from forced marriages, partly because they fear being accused of racism, the Home Affairs Select Committee said. The report said while the Government’s forced marriage unit handles around 300 cases a year, that is “only the tip of the iceberg”. Previous research for ministers suggests the true figure is between 5,000 and 8,000. Thousands of young people in the UK remain affected each year and it is "not at all clear"...

HESPERIA • Authorities located missing Hesperia teen Jessie Bender early Wednesday morning safe in Apple Valley, and investigators said she may have run away to avoid an arranged marriage in Pakistan. The 13-year-old Cedar Middle School student and her siblings were removed from the Bender family home Wednesday, Cindy Bachman, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said. “(A) family member was concealing her in Apple Valley because he was concerned that she would be taken to Pakistan and forced into an arranged marriage,” Bachman said. According to authorities, the threat was plausible. In earlier interviews, the girl’s...

A muslim who threatened to kill his wife and cut out her tongue after she blocked an arranged marriage for their daughter has been banned from seeing his family. In the first prosecution of its kind, Aurang Zeb has been convicted of breaching a Forced Marriage Protection Order taken out to stop him taking Rozina Akhtar out of Britain to marry. But despite his chilling threats he escaped imprisonment and was given community service. Last night campaigners condemned the sentence, saying it sent out the wrong message. 'There's clear evidence that this man threatened to kill his wife, so how...

An army unit has rescued a family who are claiming the Taliban tried to force them to marry off their daughters to members of the group in Matta tehsil of Swat, according to a private TV channel. The mother of the girls told the channel, “They were forcing us ... we did not want to marry off our daughters to them.” She said the Taliban also shot and injured the girls’ father, Hidayatullah, for not agreeing to their demand. Troops then launched a daring effort to rescue the family, and shifted them to a safer location, said the channel, adding...

New laws will come into force this week to help young British women of Asian background who are forced into marriage against their will. Diplomats rescued one such 15-year-old before it was too late. Standing amid the chickens that peck the courtyard dust of her home in a remote Kashmiri village, Shafaq Malik looks just like the dutiful young Pakistani wife her father wants her to become. Her pretty features framed by a lace headscarf draped over a maroon gown, she stands out from her aunts and cousins for just thing: the broad Leeds accent that gives away her previous...

MPs too scared to talk about forced marriage 'in case they lose Muslim votes' Politicians are too scared to speak out against forced marriage in case they lose valuable Muslim votes, according to a veteran Labour MP. By Martin Beckford Religious Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 12:46AM BST 02 Sep 2008 Ann Cryer said politicians in areas with high Muslim populations, many of which are Labour heartlands, should be at the forefront of the campaign to stop young couples being made to wed against their will by their families. But she claimed that some politicians are afraid to speak out on...

A NINE-YEAR-OLD girl in Pakistan has been forced to marry a man of 24 to punish her father for eloping with a neighbour’s daughter. Nazia Nawaz, who lives in the village of Babrianwala in rural Punjab, described last week how a mob of 30 men, led by a mullah and the local council, stormed her family home and demanded that she and her seven-year-old sister marry two male relatives to settle the dispute. The forced marriage of Nazia to her adult cousin had just been completed when other family members arrived to stop the wedding of her younger sister, Shazia....

What Muhsen did not know was that, before the trip in England, her father had arranged her marriage without her knowledge to another Yemenite’s fourteen-year-old son, accepting $3,000 as the ‘bride price’. This man escorted his “purchase” to Yemen with the young girl, ignorant of the fact he was her new father-in-law. Muhsen’s equally unsuspecting sister, Nadia, 14, who arrived in Yemen soon thereafter, had also been sold into marriage for the same price; but her husband was thirteen. So instead of a dream trip the two girls would always cherish, the first-time travellers found themselves stuck in a barbaric...

As parliament prepares to debate forced marriages, calls are mounting for more to be done to stop the practice, prevalent among some parts of the migrant community. According to Lathan Suntharalingam, a local politician campaigning against such marriages, it is an integration problem which can't be solved through "multicultural do-gooding". Forced marriages are those taking place under community or parental pressure, normally among immigrants. In some cases, violence and emotional blackmail is employed both before and after the wedding. There is evidence that such unions are taking place in Switzerland. The only study on the issue so far, by the...

A teenage girl who feared a marriage was being arranged by her parents was the victim of a "vile murder", a coroner has said. The decomposed body of Shafilea Ahmed, 17, was found on a riverbank in February 2004, six months after she went missing from her Warrington home. South Cumbria coroner Ian Smith ruled Shafilea had been unlawfully killed. Shafilea's parents and five family members were arrested during the police inquiry but no charges were brought. After the inquest, Supt Geraint Jones, of Cheshire Police, said it "remains a live murder inquiry". "It will not be closed until the...