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Forcibly married traumatised Brits told to take loans to pay for flights home | British citizens who have been forced into marriages overseas are being asked to cover the costs of their repatriation to the UK, The Independent has learnt. Under guidelines distributed by the Forced Marriage Unit to civil
servants and diplomats abroad, victims who cannot find enough cash are even being
asked to take out a low interest loan which will only be given to them if they
surrender their passport until the loan is fully repaid. The guidelines, which
are contained in a 105-page document entitled "Handling Cases of Forced Marriages",
were drawn up earlier this year and distributed to civil servants involved with
forced marriage cases and victims of so-called "honour violence". In a chapter
entitled "Repatriation", officials working overseas are warned that many forced
marriage victims will be "extremely traumatised and frightened" by the time they
arrive or flee to British embassies. Those seeking the protection of their Government
"may have been held against their will for many months or years?may have been
raped?Sometimes they will have risked their life to escape." But on the same page
the guidelines also advise officials to try and recoup the costs of repatriating
the same people back to Britain. "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is obliged
to ask the person or trusted friends to fund the cost of repatriation," the report
states. On the following page, embassy officials are advised what to do if the
victims cannot pay for their own return home. The emergence of the guidelines
comes just days after The Independent revealed that two of Britain's most prominent
charities working with victims of forced marriages have had their Government funding
slashed. The Honour Network, which runs Britain's only national helpline for forced
marriage victims, and the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation are
now reliant on public donations and say they will have to begin cutting vital
services unless more money can be found. Opposition politicians, however, have
attacked the repatriation methods as "heartless" and said that confiscating a
victim's passport until a loan was repaid was a tactic "reminiscent of those used
by people traffickers." The Forced Marriage Unit, which is run jointly by the
Home Office and the Foreign Office, receives approximately 1,600 calls every year,
300 of which result in repatriation. Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are the most
common countries for British women to be forcibly married abroad. These three
embassies have a dedicated team that specializes in locating victims. |
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