UK to fight forced Asian marriages

LONDON: After years of finding itself unable to deal with the phenomenon of South Asian families in Britain forcing their children to marry people from the Indian sub-continent, the British government has now stepped up measures to tackle the problem.

The Forced Marriages Unit (FMU), jointly operated by the Home Office and Foreign Office, has been dealing with thousands of cases in which young men and women from south Asian families are forced by their families to marry strangers. Many such cases lead to suicides and what are called 'honour killings'.

At a two-day conference here this week, Imran Rehman, a Derby-based functionary of the charity organisation Karma Nirvana, narrated how he became a victim of forced marriage when he was taken to Pakistan as a 10-year-old and was engaged to a girl aged five.