Married to misery

Other suicides lead to Romeo and Juliet8217; headlines in newspapers. In one tragic case this year a young Sikh women hanged herself after being told by her parents that her relationship with a Muslim boy should stop.

Such pressure to conform, combined with high expectations, can lead to massive strain n young women. Veena Raleigh, an epidemiologist who has studied suicides among Asian women, said the tight-knit domestic unit with a strong sense of family pride could be a contributory factor.

8220;Such a close institution has tremendous pay offs such as very low delinquency and very high educational achievement,8221; she said. 8220;But a problem is that women have no self-identity. You are a mother or a wife or a sister. You are never yourself. That leads to tremendous pressures.8221;

In some cases suicide has nothing to do with failing to live up to expectations of a loving, if demanding, family. Some of those that Philip Balmforth, the community officer with Bradford police, deals with involve women who have been prisoners in their own homes. He has rescued young Pakistani women who, but for the journey from Manchester airport to a Northern town, have never left their flats or houses.

Last winter Balmforth managed to get a woman out of a flat where she had been kept by her husband, a drug user. The marriage had been arranged in Pakistan and the women could not speak English. 8220;We had to teach her how to use money, how to use telephones, how to take the bus.8221;

GROWING concern about a related issue 8212; forced marriages 8212; recently led the Home Office to set up a working group. Though the analysis was useful, its key achievement was breaking the taboo on publicly speaking about such an subject, experts say.

But any government involvement is fraught with difficulty. Domestic violence and the value systems that legitimise it 8212; is a far thornier issue.

Some fear that focusing on honour and shame8217; can lead to the Asian community being stigmatised and stereotyped. Baroness Uddin of Bethnal Green, who co-chaired the forced marriages report, told The Observer it risked reinforcing old and dangerous prejudices.

However, activists such as Hanana Siddiqui of the Southall Black Sisters, say that, though the Home Office insists multicultural sensitivity8217; will not lead to moral blindness8217;, the Government is wary of taking on the leaders of ethnic communities over cultural traditions.

Optimists says that, as the Asian community becomes more assimilated and conservative traditionalism dies away, the issue will resolve itself.

Often victims of violence are women born or educated in the UK whose aspirations are very different from those of older family members.

Shamshad Hussain, the Bradford community worker, remains worried. Change, she says, has to be carefully managed.

8220;Unless we all unite to take an honest and strong, intelligent and open stance on this issues now, you are likely to see a backlash of traditionalism by young people, particularly young women, as a defence against Western values that threaten them and their traditional position.8221;

For many Asian women in the UK, Hussain point out, it is already too late.

Excerpts from Love, honour and obey 8212; or die8217;, The Observer8217;, October 8, 2000