\n I know at least one of their daughters are being forced to get married in Australia. <\/p>\n
Helena Hassani, expert on child and forced marriage <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
\u201cThat day when she was sentenced, we had a family gathering. A lot of middle-aged women who never talk about these things were asking me, what\u2019s going to happen? Is she going to go to jail?\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, yes, she\u2019s sentenced, and you\u2019re going to have to be really careful, because forced marriage is illegal in Australia,\u201d said Hassani. \u201cAnd they\u2019re really looking pale, because I know at least one of their daughters are being forced to get married in Australia.\u201d <\/p>\n
Forced marriage is considered a form of gender-based violence that predominantly affects young women, whose control over their lives is passed without consent from their parents to their partners. It can lead to decades of physical and psychological abuse, and in some cases suicide or murder. <\/p>\n
In the past six years, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has received 531 reports of forced marriages in Australia, most involving children under the age of 18. <\/p>\n
Haidari\u2019s was one of them. <\/p>\n
She was introduced to her future husband, Mohammad Ali Halimi, on June 1, 2019, and the very next day began confiding her objections to her friends, her driving instructor, her teachers, then ultimately the police. <\/p>\n
Officers spoke to her on August 19, but the next day a mullah was called to officiate a permanent Nikah ceremony, confirming the couple\u2019s earlier engagement. <\/p>\n
He paid her family a dowry of 15,000 Australian dollars ($9,700). <\/p>\n
Halimi returned to his home in Perth in Western Australia, under the agreement that his wife would join him when she finished high school. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn our community, in our culture, we have got this saying, which is girls should leave their parents\u2019 home with a white dress, which is your wedding dress, and they should leave their husband\u2019s home again with a white dress, which is your coffin,\u201d said Hassani. <\/p>\n
And that is exactly what happened to Haidari. <\/p>\n
In January 2020, within weeks of a party to celebrate their marriage at a sports center in Shepparton attended by 500 guests, Halimi killed his young wife. <\/p>\n
At home in Perth, he had been arguing with Haidari\u2019s brother on the phone, and when the call ended, the unhappy newlyweds continued to fight. <\/p>\n
According to court documents, Haidari told him to \u201cf*** off,\u201d and he grabbed a large kitchen knife and lunged at her with such force that he severed two of her arteries. <\/p>\n
Halimi pleaded guilty, telling police he\u2019d become increasingly frustrated after she repeatedly rebuffed his attempts at sexual intimacy. He also complained that she had failed to cook or keep the house clean, and often slept while he worked seven days a week to support them. <\/p>\n
Halimi was sentenced to life in prison. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe really did not want to get married,\u201d Hassani, of UTS, said of Haidari. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe came back from Perth, asking the family, please don\u2019t let me go, please get my divorce, and mom was like, \u2018No, go back.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re supposed to leave your husband\u2019s home with white coffin, which she did, poor lady.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jennifer Burn, the founding director of Anti-Slavery Australia, says that women inside and outside the country seek help every day via My Blue Sky, a website that offers free and confidential advice to women stuck in or trying to avoid forced marriages. <\/p>\n
\u201cAustralia is so multicultural, and we have reports across the board, all religions, all ethnicities,\u201d said Burn, who has campaigned against modern slavery for more than two decades. Forced marriages have been reported within communities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India, among others. <\/p>\n
Often, those at risk are young girls from socially conservative families, who are living at home and are reluctant to go to the police because they don\u2019t want their parents to get into trouble. <\/p>\n\n Australia is so multicultural \u2026 we have reports across the board. <\/p>\n
Jennifer Burn, founding director, Anti-Slavery Australia <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n
The practice has been going on for decades, but in recent years the Australian government has made a point of targeting offenders, and on the day of Jan\u2019s sentencing, the attorney general announced the start of consultations about what a stronger civil response could look like. <\/p>\n
Changes could include allowing victims to apply for a court protection order against potential offenders or relaxing the rules so that adults can be added to airport watch lists, if there\u2019s a fear they could be taken abroad to be married. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea of building greater civil protection for people who are facing forced marriages is really, really important, and that can go hand in hand with the criminal response,\u201d said Burn. <\/p>\n
Some of the measures borrow from forced-marriage laws in Britain, where hundreds of people take out protection orders each year to thwart an impending forced marriage. <\/p>\n
The United Kingdom also has the interagency Forced Marriage Unit, which works with the foreign and interior ministries as well as charities to try and stop British victims being compelled to marry both at home and abroad. The unit\u2019s latest statistics show 69% of cases referred to them involve female victims, while 31% are male. <\/p>\n
Other countries such as France, Canada and Germany also have specific laws against forced marriage. <\/p>\n
Support is already given to women within Australia, but in late July rules were relaxed so that social welfare groups can also refer victims for crisis support and accommodation, alongside the AFP. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need to talk to the police. You can be supported for up to 200 days, and potentially more,\u201d said Burn. \u201cYou\u2019d be provided with comprehensive 24\/7 casework support, including accommodation. That is something that can be incredibly important in a crisis situation.\u201d <\/p>\n
Straight after Monday\u2019s sentencing hearing, Jan was taken away to spend her first days inside a women\u2019s prison on the outskirts of Melbourne. <\/p>\n
Her barrister Andrew Buckland said that, as an illiterate, non-English speaker, it\u2019s likely she doesn\u2019t have a good understanding of what\u2019s going on, though she has indicated she wants to appeal the sentence. <\/p>\n
As a permanent resident and not an Australian citizen, Jan\u2019s sentence will cost her far more than 12 months in prison. Under Australia\u2019s Migration Act, her visa could be cancelled under rules that seek to remove non-citizens who commit serious crimes. <\/p>\n
A month before Jan\u2019s sentencing, the immigration minister circulated a directive specifically naming the crime of forced marriage as serious enough to warrant the removal of a visa. Without a visa, Jan would be subject to deportation to her home country of Afghanistan, although as signatory to the Refugee Convention, Australia is obligated to not send refugees back to potential harm. <\/p>\n
Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, the persecution of Hazaras has escalated alongside increasing deprivations for women who are now living under a system of \u201cgender apartheid,\u201d according to the United Nations. <\/p>\n
Without a visa, after serving her sentence, Jan could be forced into immigration detention, or potentially released under a bridging visa with strict monitoring conditions including the use of an ankle bracelet. <\/p>\n
During Jan\u2019s sentencing hearing, Judge Dalziel cited a letter of support from the Goulburn Valley Afghanistan Association that described her as \u201ca quiet, kind and helpful woman.\u201d <\/p>\n
However, Hassani says Jan has lost the respect of the community she tried so hard to please. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt has really damaged her reputation, her respect, and she has literally no place in the community,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Like many perpetrators, Jan was also a victim of forced marriage, compelled to marry a man she didn\u2019t know at age 12. Her first baby followed soon after. <\/p>\n
Her parents would likely have believed they were acting in her best interests. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole community believes that if you have got a husband, then you\u2019re respected, you\u2019re valued, the whole world is yours,\u201d said Hassani. \u201cTo be a good woman, you have to be married, and you have to be a nice, obedient wife.\u201d <\/p>\n
To be divorced is to bring shame on the family. It can also be financially debilitating for whichever party has to pay back the dowry and cost of wedding celebrations. <\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of girls would rather suicide, than live with that shame and stigma,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Divorcees are labeled as \u201cbewa,\u201d which was the label attached to Haidari years earlier when her mother arranged for her to marry another man at age 15. That union ended in divorce. <\/p>\n
The court heard that Jan thought that marrying off Ruqia would be in her best interests. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst you believed you were acting in her best interests, you were not in fact doing so,\u201d said Judge Dalziel. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not acceptable within the Hazara community to force a child to marry. But it does happen, and the value the community places on marriage makes it hard to break the cycle. <\/p>\n
But Hassani believes change can happen \u2013 she\u2019s already seeing younger generations pushing back against the pressure placed on them to marry. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy that a lot of children who have grown up here are standing up for themselves,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it still needs a lot of time to resolve this clash between parents and the community\u2019s expectations.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
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