Zena had been following a murder trial in London with an interest verging on obsession. “I really wanted to go to court myself but I can never risk going to the city and being seen by someone,” she said.
“But I feel such a bond with other women who may have been through what I went through, even though you never meet these girls; you just hear about them when these ‘honor killing’ trials come up. I wish I could get involved with the support groups and help but you know, I’m just a coward.”
Having first walked out of an abusive marriage at the age of 17 and then from a hostile family who had had a meeting to discuss whether or not she should die, Zena does not lack courage but she is still very scared.
She has every reason to be. Her Bangladeshi-born mother had suggested that Zena might be allowed to poison herself rather than be murdered for bringing shame on the family. Zena, born in England, is second-generation British Asian and her accent betrays where she was brought up although it is far from where she lives now.
“I’m sorry to be so cloak-and-dagger but you never know what they might be capable of, I know there are plenty of young men who would love to play bounty hunter just for a bit of kudos in the community.”
Another court case six years ago had shocked Zena into climbing out of the window of her locked bedroom and leaving home with £46 (roughly US$76) and a change of clothes, an impulsive act she believes saved her life.
It was the story of Heshu Yones, 16, from Acton, west London, who was stabbed 11 times and then had her throat cut by her father who said he had to kill her because other men in his circle of Kurdish friends thought she had a boyfriend and his honor was shamed. Abdalla Yones was convicted of murder and jailed for life in 2003.
“A family member told me that there had been a meeting about killing me but it was seeing that case in the paper that made it real,” said Zena. The threat to women in the UK from such violence is very real and the list of names of girls and women killed in the name of “honor” is growing.
Police estimate at least 12 are dying each year in the UK but others will be hidden — forced suicides and murders made to look like suicide are widely believed to take place undetected. Women aged 16 to 24 from Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi backgrounds are three times more likely to kill themselves than the national average for that age and it is impossible to tell what pressures some must have been under. And for every woman who dies, it seems certain that there are many, many more living with honor-based abuse and hidden away in shuttered communities.
Support groups are springing up. The Henna Foundation is based in Cardiff and Jasvinder Sanghera, who fled a forced marriage and made a new life for herself, set up a charity called Karma Nirvana in Derby, central England, after her sister Robina killed herself to escape the misery of her loveless marriage.
When it opened its help line in April 2008, Karma Nirvana received 4,000 calls in the first year and is now taking 300 calls a month from people under threat of honor-based violence, often linked to forced marriage.
After the UK government’s forced marriage unit was set up in April last year, it received 5,000 calls and rescued 400 victims in the first six months.
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