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New School Year Puts French on Forced Marriage Alert

More news stories on France

Sophie Hardach, Reuters, September 2, 2009

As thousands of girls and young women prepare to start the new school year in France, activists are sounding the alarm over those who are missing—teenagers sent abroad over the holidays and forced into marriage.

Most victims are of Asian, African or Middle Eastern descent and belong to France’s Muslim community, the largest in Europe.

While countries such as Britain have set up special units that track down victims at home and overseas, activists say France is only now waking up to the problem.

{snip} Over the past year, France has begun to tackle the problem more aggressively. Last November, Paris City Hall published a guide advising officials on detecting forced marriages.

But former victims and activists, many of them second- or third-generation immigrants working in France’s multicultural suburbs, said such moves were unlikely to help women married off abroad, or scared into silence.

Zeliha Alkis, who works for Elele, a non-profit organization that mainly helps women of Turkish origin, cites the example of a young woman of Turkish descent who was married to a Turkish man at a Paris town hall this summer. On her wedding night, she was locked in a room, and when she screamed and protested, her grandmother tied her up so the marriage could be consummated.

WEDDING SEASON

In many other cases, the women are married in the family’s country of origin. Reasons include the family wanting to ensure the woman marries a candidate deemed suitable, settling a debt and procuring a visa for the groom. Unlike arranged marriage, which can be consensual, these weddings are performed against the women’s will.

{snip}

No one knows exactly how many French women are forced into such unions. A report on women’s rights by France’s high council for integration in 2003 put the number of girls and women at risk of being forced into marriage at 70,000, based on research by grassroots organizations.

{snip}

France has at times steered an awkward course between trying to respect its ethnic minorities and defending women’s rights; last year, a French court annulled the marriage of a Muslim woman on the grounds that she lied about being a virgin.

Similarly, some see forced marriage as a religious issue, even though Islam bans it and imams helping the women have been threatened.

{snip}

Original article

(Posted on September 4, 2009)

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Comments

1 — Janos Budapest/Hungary wrote at 6:14 PM on September 4:

At least those who have been sent/sold/exported from France to other muslim countries will not have children in France, thus easing the burden on “one upon a time France” by self-deportation. Small thing but actually its good news…

Janos/BP/Hungary

2 — Anonymous wrote at 6:59 PM on September 4:

“a young woman of Turkish descent was married to a Turkish man at a Paris town hall this summer. On her wedding night, she was locked in a room and when she screamed and protested, her grandmother tied her up so the marriage could be consummated.”

Does this make any sense? If she objected to the marriage, the place to have said so was at the town hall when she was ASKED. She gave her consent, didn’t she? She couldn’t have been married otherwise! Why didn’t she do her kicking and screaming there, in public, instead of at home in a locked room where no one could hear her? Even her own grandmother didn’t sympathize. (And how old was she, btw? Surely of the age of consent or she could have been married at town hall.)

“While countries such as Britain have set up special units that track down victims at home and overseas, activists say France is only now waking up to the problem.”

Tracking down victims overseas? Why should they? And what are the authorities going to do about it when this is totally beyond their control?

Anyway, I really don’t see what these sticky religious and social problems among Moslems (and others too) have to do with “race” —- presumably Amren’s topic of concern. Or with us. However sad and distressing, these women’s rights problems that exist among non-European alien immigrant groups, they are of their own making and should be their own concern, not ours. Let them solve their problems among themselves. We have enough to worry about without trying to solve their messy tribal and religious issues and sort out their superstitions. The only thing that’s clear is that they should not be among us in the first place. If they’re causing problems here, don’t try to solve their problems for them…. just send them back.

And good riddance, I might add.

3 — Anonymous wrote at 10:57 PM on September 4:

“No one knows exactly how many French women are forced into such unions.”

I know how many: 0.00 French women. Maybe thousands of muslims in France were forced into marriage, but 0.00 French women were afflicted with a muslim husband forced upon them.

4 — SKIP wrote at 1:55 AM on September 5:

No one knows exactly how many French women are forced into such unions

These women are no more French than the Somalis who came to and then left the U.S. to fight us in Somalia and they were called Americans!!!! same thing here, not French, MUSLIMS~!

5 — Anonymous wrote at 3:09 AM on September 5:

The previous two posters missed the implications of this part

“…and procuring a visa for the groom.”

ie limitless immigration from the third would.

6 — Anonymous wrote at 5:05 AM on September 5:

“At least those who have been sent/sold/exported from France to other muslim countries will not have children in France, thus easing the burden on “one upon a time France” by self-deportation. Small thing but actually its good news…”

Except that they’re all going to come back and have babies on the government dole.

7 — Farang wrote at 7:06 AM on September 5:

Those forced marriages lead to more Third World immigration, since the objective, as the article said, is to provide the groom with a visa (French citizens’ foreign spouses are automatically allowed to live in France).

Sometimes, the foreign husband lives in France while his wife is detained overseas…

8 — UnTel wrote at 11:50 PM on September 5:

There is a feminist double standard in France. The most appalling treatment of women by Moslems and Africans is tolerated as merely cultural differences. Female genital mutilation is technically a crime in France, but Moslems have not been discouraged from this practice.

9 — A. Windaus wrote at 9:11 AM on September 6:

Janos: That may be true but they may come back to France with their husband and children, who will now all be French citizens under a family unification law.

10 — Anonymous wrote at 9:13 AM on September 7:

“If she objected to the marriage, the place to have said so was at the town hall when she was ASKED. She gave her consent, didn’t she?”

She may have felt too frightend or scared of her family not to consent at the time. Whatever the reason, Europe doesn’t need to deal with this.

11 — voter wrote at 4:05 PM on September 7:

“She may have felt too frightend or scared of her family not to consent at the time.”

That makes no sense to me. She certainly wasn’t that afraid of them when she was home ALONE with them and they were free to beat her and TIE HER UP! Her best chance to speak was when out in public where they couldn’t that.

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