Well, the conviction is for killings, not just a FM. But if someone in my family was being forced into a marriage that I knew of, yes I’d try to prevent it.

“My father had been on my case to start looking in Bangladesh – which I had not really been in favour of for a number of reasons, but I decided to relent. Most of my friends who are doing the arranged marriage scene have gotten excellent brides from Bangladesh, and perhaps its time I joined the club.”

i said this higher up in the thread and ill say it again: there are wider social issues to be dealt with before honour killings will go away. catching the killers is one thing – absolutely we should be trying to do that.

at the same time bolting the barn door and cementing it over finely and arguing over what brand of cement to use – isn’t particularly useful once the horse has bolted. got to wonder why the horse keeps bolting.

and again i would argue – the big problems to tackle here are : families thinking they ‘own’ their children – and the wider arranged marriage issue. no one is really admitting to the fact that many arranged marriages do actually involve pressure from the parents. Not all the time, and it is complicated by the fact that a lot of people are accepting of this kind of parental and social pressure. Why even the younger generation are at it – encouraging each other to listen to their ‘parents’ and saying of course you shouldn’t think of marrying who YOU want to marry. and the amount of racism, classism, tribalism that we Indians can demonstrate when it comes to thinking of marriage – all those centuries of brainwashing is taking its toll.

this is really the wider issue that most people don’t seem to want to touch with a bargepole because it would offend the ‘community’s sensitivities. In fact it is much easier to criticise this kind of behaviour from elders and families in india itself, pakistan and bangladesh, than it is in migrant indian communities elsewhere, it seems.

I think that the reason for focussing on these kinds of killings was not so much to do with the severity of the crime (murder is murder) but due to the way they are detected and prevented.

The reason why there is this quibbling over language is due to the way the murder is justified within the family unit which perpetrates it. Reclaiming the moral language is the first step in defeating these justifications.

Apart from anything else, it’s not that long since ‘crime of passion’ was an accepted plea of mitigation in a murder trial in the UK. It’s not that long ago that ‘domestics’ were considered much less important than other murders.

As I’ve said elsewhere recently, I don’t really see the difference between a murder committed by a maniac drunk on ‘honour’ and a murder committed by a maniac drunk on Stella.

The victim is just as dead.

it’s murder pure and simple and that’s that.

Perhaps some detail is needed – are they restricting ‘family members’ to like the mum and dad in the picture, who are more likely to be suspects than say a younger sister. But how would we know that the mother wasn’t so abused herself she failed to protect her daughter? we won’t will we? Yes in theory a mother should be able to protect her child, but then perhaps in hindsight we should go and throw all the women who over the centuries failed to protect their children from their violent families/husbands. yes we also know many women perpetutate the violent norms but how do we differentiate between who is doing what? is someone going to come forth and explain how they are going to work this out?

So given asian families are pretty big and pretty hierarchical in terms of the weight of what you say being dependent on your own vulnerable position – has anyone considered this? Are we counting cousins, second cousins here?

Sunny I do hope for your sake you haven’t got some cousin somewhere who isn’t forced into marriage – technically if you didn’t do anything about it, you’d be in jail too right?

It’s one thing if you suspect your family are cold-blooded murderers and you toddle off to the police to cover your own back in case something happens. But how many people really think their families are cold-blooded murderers?

Also i have to say many arranged marriages seem to happen with very little knowledge on the part of siblings if they are younger. I know for example no one in my family ever told me anything – my eldest sister who lives in bangladesh always had a difficult marriage. for a long long time, the only things i ever heard were when i was visiting bangladesh and i heard things from the servants.

Dunno, i see what people are trying to do, but it seems no one has really thought about the reality on the ground. it seems like one of those’ we’ve got to do something’ situations.

well i’m glad i don’t have too many family members in this country, and when my 3 year old niece grows up i shall have to be very vigilant I can see. My sister is very traditional and i don’t imagine for a second she would go off and murder someone but hell you never know do you.

Are we seriously asking for people who have family members sympathetic to the far right to start reporting them to the police because they could turn into another David Copeland??

Not necessarily Kulvinder. An ‘unapproved’ relationship may come from limited contact at school/college/uni. Doesn’t mean a girl has the confidence to run away or disobey her parents openly. You’re playing devil’s advocate without taking into account people’s emotions here.

My point was just to highlight the impracticality of the ‘test’. If someone has a ‘degree of freedom’ from family social control they can use that to get their own help – if need be from the school/university etc. Unless we’re taking some bizzare definition of a relationship (‘they looked at each other across the lecture theatre and hence were a couple’ etc) there had to have been the ability to do what they chose to do. Its nonsensical to say that they had the freedom for an ‘illicit’ relationship but didn’t have the freedom to find help.

And im not playing devil’s advocate; holding someone culpable for not forseeing extreme events that they didn’t participate in, and had no actual prior knowledge of is lunacy.

The law isn’t perfect but it NEVER is. It always comes to the judge / jury to make sure they make the right call. Sounds ok to me.

You could apply that logic to anything – If you broaden the scope of ‘negligence’ into other areas you may as well charge the Mccanns when they come back for leaving their children unattended or charge the parents in situations like this.

If you genuinely feel he is an immediate risk to others, then yes.

Why don’t we just call it murder?

And when members of a family conspire to murder someone, why don’t we just call that conspiracy to murder?

What is this obsession with buzzwords to describe something which has been illegal in this country since before the Norman Conquest?

The woman speaks sense, why aren’t more of you listening to her?

No, just applying Don’s logic to similar circumstances.

I wouldn’t weep if they shipped you off to gitmo Muzumdar. Are you looking for sympathy?

Assuming the victim was in an ‘unapproved’ relationship they obviously had the freedom to go where they wished, and its up to them to check into a refuge.

Not necessarily Kulvinder. An ‘unapproved’ relationship may come from limited contact at school/college/uni. Doesn’t mean a girl has the confidence to run away or disobey her parents openly. You’re playing devil’s advocate without taking into account people’s emotions here.

The law isn’t perfect but it NEVER is. It always comes to the judge / jury to make sure they make the right call. Sounds ok to me.

This is exactly the sort of law that everyone thinks is a good idea until they come up against the wrong side of it.

I (D) have a colleague at work and I have a ‘strong suspicion’ that he will one day become a suicide bomber. He speaks of Jews this, Israel that, infidel this, West that, global Shariah etc and is clearly of a Jihadic bent.

If I don’t ‘make the call’, am I culpable for him self-detonating?

(No joke by they way).

I’m guessing that that is for the jury to decide.

Just an example, if D knows or has a strong suspicion that a family invitation to V for a reconcilliatory meal is a ruse to commit murder, then a reasonable step might be a warning telephone call. Not to make such a call would surely be culpable.