Monthly Archives: May 2003

Against their will

By Zubeida Mustafa

The ugly tradition of protecting honour by killing and violating women is not limited to Pakistan. Girls from Pakistan living in the UK have been forced into marriages with cousins back home to protect honour, writes Zubeida Mustafa

Five years ago 19-year-old Rukhsana Naz was strangled to death by her brother while her mother held her down by her feet. This happened in Britain, the country Naz’s parents had migrated to from Pakistan and where she had been born and bred. The murdered girl’s crime? She had “shamed her family.” First she had refused to stay in marriage to the man in Pakistan whom she had been wedded to when she was 16. Second, she had decided to return to the man she loved.
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