Britain’s first Asian peer, Baroness Fletcher has dramatically called for couples who are getting married to be forced to have a DNA test to ensure they are not cousins to put a curb on growing incest within the Pakistani community.
Baroness Fletcher, a former Tory who now sits as a cross-bencher, said in the House of Lords that it is “absolutely appalling” that first cousin marriages in Pakistani communities are leading to “so much disability among children”.
In a critical statement lamenting the amount of disability in the Pakistani Community, the distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association described the said state of affairs in the community as ”absolutely appalling”, claiming that one or two out of every four or five children have some disability.
“You go to any such family and there will be four or five children, at least one or two of whom will have some disability. That is absolutely unacceptable, and if we cannot do anything about it, is it fair to the children?” The former Barrister who was born in Pakistan, is very knowledgeable about the practice in her community. She wants to see bad practice clamped down, and has condemned it as one ”not belonging to this age”, in the light of a swathe of knowledge of DNA today. There should be at least some rule that says you must have a DNA examination before your marriage can be registered”.
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First-cousin marriages are not illegal in the UK today, and are common within Britain’s Pakistani community, among some Arab and African families. The Pakistani community in Britain are responsible for over 35% of British children born with a genetic disease- a statistic that makes grim reading in a developed country that has its own challenges without one having to cope with the extra plight of being born with a disability that could have been avoided.
She went on to bemoan the much reviled Sharia law- an Islamic Caliphate in which Muslim laws are imposed in those circles- which facilitate the process of divorce for men upon their request, but compel women to wait, even denying them the same right under Sharia Law in the long run.
She said: “I know I am probably talking about Muslims, but we now have this business of sharia marriages. It is appalling that the man can get a divorce by just asking for it, while a woman may have to wait years, and may still not get it. She can get a British divorce, but not a sharia divorce.
Noble Lords may ask, “Why does that matter?”, and I asked that of those women. They replied, “It means that we can’t go to Pakistan”.
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“If they go there, the husband can come and take the children away, no matter what age they are. In any case, the husband can take the children from a sharia marriage when they are seven. All marriages should be automatically registered in this country. It is not fair to the women that some British women — they are British women when they come here — are treated in a different and unacceptable way from others.
Equality of opportunity and treatment between men and women has long been a void in Pakistani Communities, but their long held practice in is premised on deeply entrenched traditional views that inherently see women as being subordinate to men, at least as part of the hierachical structure of the family. Perhaps, she would like to see Human Right laws imposed on the Pakistani government, though though how ideal or practical it would be to superimpose our ideals on a sovereign nation amid is another question. International problems and tension is enough as it is. Perhaps in Britain, some regulation can be impose don the way the Pakistani community have children. Though that will mean reviewing the current law that allow first cousin marriages.
Baroness Flather became a life peer for the Conservative party in June 1990 in the Royal County of Berkshire, and she was the first Asian woman to receive a Peerage. In 1996, she received the Asian who is who Asian of the year and also was the recipient of a Grass Roots Diplomat Initiative award in 2015 for her outspoken work on women’s rights. A graduate of the reputable University College of London, she is a welcome voice to a much neglected issue in need of urgent attention. Eye of media will keep tabs on this critical issue and see how the government responds to it.
