Free at last
Yesssssssssss – Humayra Abedin is free. She’s out, she’s safe, she’s in the hands of the British High Commission, she’s expected to return to the UK tomorrow.
I haven’t felt this lachrymose since 8 pm Pacific Time on November 4th. She’s out. She’s safe. She has her own life back.
London’s High Court had ordered her return to the UK under the new Forced Marriage Act and the High Court in Dhaka has now ruled she must be freed…Lawyer Sara Hossain, representing Dr Abedin, said her client wanted to return to the UK and her family had been ordered to return her passport…She was later released into the custody of the court and handed over to the British High Commission. Dr Abedin is expected to return to the UK on Monday. Judge Syed Mahmud Hossain said her parents’ actions were “not acceptable”.
No they weren’t. Thank you Judge Hossain.
Judge Hossain was shocked.
Yesterday, Judge Syed Mahmod Hossain ordered Dr Abedin’s parents to return her passport, driver’s licence and credit card. “It perplexes me as to why the parents kept her confined and interfered with her personal life. I am shocked,” he said.
Good. A useful lesson.
Dr Abedin’s lawyer, Sara Hossain, said: “Our courts have shown that we can guarantee the liberty of our citizens. This is quite a precedent.”
Damn right.
Now if only we could hear that Jestina Mukoko is free – alive, and free; and that all her colleagues are alive and free too; and that Mugabe has fled to an undisclosed location never to be heard from again – then we could all have a really good sniff.
Being the suspicious sort, I’ll celebrate when Dr. Abedin is actually on that plane.
I also hope she gets some counseling. To say that she has no hard feelings because they’re her parents suggests she needs it.
Whoa. What? So it wasn’t absolutely clear that it was illegal in Britain to steal someone’s passport?
Jenavir: Judge Hossain is a judge in Bangladesh, where human rights in general – let alone women’s rights in specific – are not always so clear.
>I also hope she gets some counseling.< Hasn’t she been through enough? :-) >To say that she has no hard feelings because they’re her parents suggests she needs it.< Hearing her say those words on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, I suspect she said that because she sees no value in airing her feelings on the matter in public, and that all she wants now is to put the episode behind her and get back to her friends and to her work as a trainee GP.
I too was thrilled to hear that Dr. Abedin was ordered freed. This is one small victory for freedom. I wonder, though, how shocked Judge Hossain really was. As I understand it, forced marriage would not be unknown to him. Was he shocked because of her social class, her advanced education, her UK citizenship, or because she was a woman being forced to do something against her will?
I ask these questions, because I don’t know what the plight of Bangladeshi women would have been in similar situations. Are there laws in Bangladesh governing forced marriage? Are they applied? How common is forced marriage in Bangladesh?
Erm, while being happy at Dr Abedin’s freedom, one thing is puzzling me. Is she actually a UK citizen? My impression is that she is actually a Bangladeshi citizen studying in the UK.
Right – she’s a Bangladeshi citizen. The BBC article says the injunction under the Forced Marriage Act was not enforceable in Bangla because Abedin is not a British national and that the FO said ‘the order was issued in the hope that it might “carry some weight” within the Bangladeshi court system.’ Also that forced marriage is illegal in Bangladesh. So it looks as if the two legal systems collaborated to restore and enforce Abedin’s right to live and study medicine in another country, to travel freely, and to choose her own spouse. Globalism at its best.