Humayra Abedin interview
Today’s Independent on Sunday carries a long interview with Dr. Abedin, the British resident who was kidnapped in Bangladesh by her family in the hopes of forcing her into a marriage. She was then freed by the Bangladeshi High Court, with the help of the Forced Marriage Unit.
“For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.”
A long piece, but worth reading in full.
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Filed in: Cultural Relativism
Seriously heartening. Thanks, Rumbold.
Cheers Rumbold.
What particularly disturbed me about this article was how Dr Abedin’s parents changed from being fairly liberal and rational to being willing to have their own child kidnapped, assaulted and imprisoned.
Interesting to note how it was other, more backward elements in their extended family which encouraged this unacceptable behaviour. I’ve seen this happen before. One part of an extended family will be decent, tolerant and non-violent. But it gets corrupted by other family members who are far less enlightened.
Thanks for this Rumbold – will read it through. I was googling the internet for ordinary people’s responses to what happened in december, there weren’t too many Bangladeshi bloggers covering what happened (i was curious about domestic responses to what was going on) and i only found a few forum type places with comments – and they were truly disheartening. All focused on how this woman was a liar (for what gain?) and the ‘West’ were trying to ‘interfere’ and blah blah nonsense. What i found really depressing was how people are willing to believe that someone could make stuff like this up.