Thursday, January 18, 2007

U.K. `Honor Killings,' Cloaked in Family Silence

And the silence from the civil rights people is deafening.

Jan. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Samaira Nazir rejected Pakistani suitors chosen by her family and planned to elope with her Afghan boyfriend. The penalty for her defiance: death from 18 stab wounds inflicted by her brother and cousin at the family home in Southall, England.

More than a dozen women are killed for violating community standards each year in the U.K., according to police. While Nazir's killers were jailed for life, U.K. police ignore hundreds of ``honor crimes'' to avoid inflaming relations with Muslim enclaves as they work to head off homegrown terror plots, say lawmakers and women's rights advocates.

``There is a kid-gloves approach on the basis that you don't want to offend these communities,'' says Usha Sood, a lawyer and lecturer at Nottingham Trent University who specializes in forced marriage cases. ``If you take into account the whole range of honor offenses, the number runs into the thousands.''


There is something seriously wrong in Britain.

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