Word: abedin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...With reporting by Shahreen Abedin...
...Earlier in December, after being alerted to her situation, the British High Court had issued an injunction to Abedin's family in Bangladesh to allow her to return to the U.K. under Britain's Forced Marriage Act of 2007. It was the first time the law - which went into effect on Nov. 25 of this year and gives courts the power to protect forced-marriage victims and dole out sentences to their perpetrators - was invoked on behalf of someone who is not a British national. While the court order had no legal bearing in Bangladesh, a sympathetic judge, Justice Syed...
...Abedin's public reaction to her verdict confirms what human-rights groups say is another challenge of controlling forced marriage through legal mechanisms: the victims rarely want to use the law to punish their parents. "I'm relieved that I'm free. I'm happy," Abedin told reporters on Dec. 14 after being released in Dhaka. "But I don't have any bad feelings towards my parents." Speaking outside court, Abedin insisted that she does not want her parents to be prosecuted, as she still loves them...
Deputy Director Amtal Rana of Kiran-Asian Women's Aid, a nonprofit that received more than 100 calls last year regarding forced marriages, says Abedin's is not an uncommon reaction. "Children often don't want to have action taken against their parents but just want to get out of the situation," says Rana. Reports suggest that Abedin's strict Muslim parents disapproved of her Hindu boyfriend in Britain and wanted her to marry a man of their choosing. "Parents are doing the same thing that happened to them and their parents and their grandparents, so they don't think...
...Talib. "A person's emotional, social and economic dependence sometimes accounts for them becoming an easy prey to forced marriages." Immigrants struggling to retain their cultural identity in their adopted homelands need reassurance that rejecting these norms will not leave them destitute community outcasts. Otherwise, says Talib, cases like Abedin's are sure to be the exception and not the rule: "Without mustering personal strength of initiative and independence, it is difficult to imagine anyone turning to the Forced Marriage Act for redress...