Just why is one woman a month still murdered in an honour killing – Fab Investigates this horrifying trend
ONE British woman a month is murdered in a so-called honour killing, while countless more live in fear because of honour-based abuse.
Fabulous investigates why these awful crimes persist in 2023.
Lying bruised and battered in a hospital bed, Alisha (name changed) watched the other patients greet their loved ones.
She was alone at visiting time – because the people responsible for her injuries were her own family.
Alisha was 21 when she was beaten and left for dead in an attempted honour killing, after leaving her abusive, forced marriage.
Despite a childhood of neglect and fear simply because she’d been born a girl, Alisha had fled to her parents’ home – the only place she knew to go.
There, she was greeted not with support, but with fury.
“They were angry and said I’d dishonoured my father. They broke my arm and jaw by stamping on me on the floor,” says Alisha, now in her 50s and a mum of two.
“When I escaped and alerted the police, officers didn’t want to get involved.
“I spent two months in hospital and was disowned, shunned by my family and community.”
After leaving hospital, Alisha went to a women’s refuge but found the environment traumatic, and eventually found a spare room to rent.
In time, she got into another relationship, but it proved to be turbulent and violent.
She believes the honour-based abuse she experienced has had a lifelong impact.
“It left me without any self-worth, a lack of confidence and the need to be a people pleaser,” she says.
“I didn’t understand the importance of self-love and self-care, and didn’t think I deserved anything of value or people’s time, because I was ‘just a girl’.”
Alisha comes from a strict Sikh-Punjabi family, but was born and raised in the UK.
She was living in the Midlands when she was attacked.
So too was 20-year-old Somaiya Begum.
Almost three decades on from Alisha’s experience, last June she was murdered by her uncle Mohammed Taroos Khan in Leicester, after she refused to marry a cousin in Pakistan.
The biomedical student had sought refuge with another of her uncles and her grandmother, following threatening attempts by her father to get her to marry.
Khan, 53, broke into the house in Bradford, West Yorkshire, stabbed Somaiya in the chest with a woodwork tool and dumped her body in a shipping container, where it was found 11 days later.
In March this year, he was jailed for life for her murder.
Forced marriage
Laws to prevent forced marriage and child brides have been introduced since Alisha’s ordeal 30 years ago, and should have protected Somaiya.
A national Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) was created in 2005, followed by the Forced Marriage Protection Order (FMPO) in 2008 – a form of injunction to prevent contact from perpetrators, stop someone being taken out of the country and prohibit marriage arrangements – and 3,343 of these were issued by the courts to women at risk up to September last year.
The Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 made it a criminal offence in England, Wales and Scotland to force someone to marry, including taking them overseas to do so.
It carries a prison sentence of up to seven years.
In February, the legal age for marriage was raised to 18 in England and Wales after a 10-year campaign by the Girls Not Brides coalition, with non-legally-binding traditional ceremonies also banned.
Yet, there are still on average 12 to 15 honour-based murders a year in the UK – and experts believe that is the tip of the iceberg as some families take girls overseas where there is less scrutiny.
A report in May by the Universities of Bristol and Lincoln also warned use of FMPOs can prevent forced marriage but increase the risk of honour-based violence.
In Somaiya Begum’s case, she first approached the authorities in Bradford for help when she was 16, and secured an FMPO against her parents.
Mohammed Taroos Khan already had a restraining order against him too, preventing him going near Somaiya’s grandmother’s house, after he threatened his own daughter with a knife.
This didn’t save Somaiya.
Cases like Alisha’s and Somaiya’s are almost always the culmination of a lifetime of mistreatment, known as honour-based abuse (HBA).
The Home Office says there were 2,887 offences of this type in the year ending March 31, 2022 in England and Wales, and a further 1,871 HBA-related incidents.
Mandatory collection of this data was only introduced in 2019 and there has been an 81% rise in cases over recent years, although this is thought to be down to greater awareness.
However, experts believe these figures drastically underplay the scale of the problem.
Dr Jasvinder Sanghera was born in Derby and ran away to escape a forced marriage at 15.
Her sister Robina later took her own life by setting herself on fire, leading Jasvinder to found the first British HBA charity, Karma Nirvana, in 1993.
Fifteen years ago, the charity set up a helpline, and, since then, it has taken 120,000 calls, and the team has assisted countless women and girls to escape abusive situations, leaving everything they know behind.
“I was born in England but my parents came from India in the ’50s,” Jasvinder says.
“I was taught from a very young age that the status and reputation of my family was invested in how we, as girls, behaved.
You are taught a whole set of things that you are not allowed to do because they will bring shame and dishonour on the family.
“It is coercive and controlling behaviour, which we have laws about in this country.
These girls are being deprived of their independence, but are conditioned from a young age to believe this is normal. It is grooming.”
For those women and girls who do try to defy the expectations imposed on them, the consequences can be deadly.
Schoolgirl Shafilea Ahmed, 17, from Warrington, was suffocated to death by her Pakistani parents in September 2003 because of their belief she’d become too Westernised after refusing a forced marriage.
They were only brought to justice nine years later after her younger sister – who was studying law at university – realised the full extent of their crime and informed police, before having to enter a witness protection programme.
Banaz Mahmod, 20, from south London, was raped, tortured and murdered by a man hired by her Iraqi-Kurdish father and uncle in January 2006, because she ended an abusive forced marriage and had met a new partner.
Her body was stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a garden in Birmingham.
She’d survived a previous attack, but authorities dismissed her reports as “melodramatic”.
Sarbjit Athwal, founder of charity True Honour and author of the memoir Shamed, knows that the decision to leave or seek official help can be a terrifying – and life-threatening – one.
She made history in 2007 when she gave evidence in open court against her former husband’s family.
Her mother-in-law, Bachan, and brother-in-law, Sukhdave, had arranged for his estranged wife Surjit to be drugged and thrown into a river while at a wedding in India in December 1998, after the mum of two had an affair and requested a divorce.
Surjit and Sarbjit, who were both from Punjabi-Sikh families, were forcibly married to the Athwal brothers as teens and lived like slaves, with constant threats of violence.
When Sarbjit heard Bachan bragging Surjit had been thrown in the river, she was threatened with the same fate, and tried to alert the authorities.
“The initial report I made to the police was completely dismissed.
“Nobody took any notice of me and I lost a lot of trust,” she says.
“It took huge courage to speak out, but I wanted justice for Surjit.
“My in-laws had their eyes on me constantly – I wasn’t even allowed to speak to my own parents.
“Women in these situations often don’t have the support of their immediate family or wider community.
12-15 honour killings happen in the UK each year.
“It’s a huge decision to leave and to make a statement.
“Everything changes for them the moment they do.”
Sarbjit was offered witness protection after giving her statement in 2005, but she was unsure who to trust and declined the offer, instead being provided with security by the police until she moved to a new area.
“In cases as serious as this, women who provide evidence against their family members often have witness protection and are given new identities,” she says.
“But it is crucial for them to know they are supported and cared for from the beginning.”
Former CPS lawyer Nazir Afzal, who has prosecuted in some of Britain’s most high-profile honour killing cases, also feels education is key – particularly of young men.
“We’ve done everything we can as far as the law is concerned – awareness is much greater now and professionals are working to protect vulnerable people,” he explains.
“When I started campaigning on this 20 years ago, I’d hoped it would die out within a generation.
“But this is one thing some young men feel should be kept going.
“It has nothing to do with one religion – it’s a cultural thing, and we need more community leadership.
“Years ago, every place of worship would be saying: ‘Stop this’. That’s not happening any more.”
2,887 honour-based abuses were recorded in England and Wales during 2022.
He thinks complacency is a factor.
“The law is in place, therefore they think it is not an issue. But, of course, it still is.”
Jasvinder argues we all have a part to play in communicating that this culture is wrong and abusive – and speaking out where we see it, as difficult as that may feel.
“People don’t want to be called racist. But this is an abuse rooted within some communities, and a small number of families may not see it as abuse,” she says.
“Unless people tell them this is not the norm, how are they going to teach their children any different?”
The next step, she feels, is to create an official definition of HBA, something that could be considered by a Women And Equalities Committee inquiry into the topic, which began last November.
For Alisha, while her own experience of HBA took place over 30 years ago, the memories of her fear are still fresh, and she knows other young women are today experiencing the same.
“People think honour killings and abuse largely happen in other countries,” she says.
“But it could be happening right now – in your neighbourhood.
“We need to take the power away from perpetrators.
“There is no honour in killing.”
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND HELP
The Forced Marriage Unit Gov.uk/guidance/forced-marriage; 020 7008 0151 (out-of-hours 020 7008 5000)
Karma Nirvana Karmanirvana.org.uk; 0800 5999 247
End Honour Killings Endhonourkillings.org
True Honour Truehonour.org.uk