Hina and her father had a close relationship that transcended the traditional parent-child dynamic. As though they were friends and not family members, the two would talk about everything – from Hina’s favourite celebrities to menstruation – a topic often considered taboo in Pakistani culture.
When Hina completed her public examination at a Hong Kong secondary school, her father showed up outside the assessment centre with a gift – the latest album by her idol, Taiwanese singer Jay Chou.
The heart-warming gestures from her father made Hina, now 33, describe him as her “superhero,” who raised her and her three siblings despite the challenges facing an ethnic minority family in Hong Kong.
But their relationship turned sour after Hina turned 25, when her father began pressuring her to marry a first cousin in Pakistan. She did not want to get married at the time and saw the marriage as a “business deal” which would allow him to move to Hong Kong. She resisted – and described what followed as half a decade of clashes and “emotional blackmail” by her family.
“When the forced marriage attempt happened, I was shocked. A lot of hurtful things were said. [My father] told me it was better to give birth to a dog than giving birth to me, and he should not have let me receive an education,” Hina told HKFP in a Cantonese-language interview last Wednesday, when the Zubin Foundation issued a report on forced marriage in Hong Kong ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8.
Hina was one of 11 ethnic minority women interviewed by accredited mediator Sala Sihombing for the NGO’s report, which defines a marriage as forced if one party does not wish to wed. Both women and men can be subjected to a forced marriage, but it remains a “highly gendered practice,” the report read.
The interviewees, all of whom were born in Hong Kong or came to the city as young children, said they were pressured or forced to marry. Shalini Mahtani, CEO of the Zubin Foundation, told the press last Wednesday the NGO had worked directly with more than 20 women in Hong Kong on forced marriage since 2018.
The process “starts very young,” Mahtani said, with some interviewees learning as children that a husband had been chosen for them. Two were married as children abroad.
According to the report, the 11 women faced different types of coercion, including psychological pressure, verbal abuse, physical abuse and confinement.
“Emotional abuse has been consistent and many of them spoke about not just emotional abuse from parents, but from siblings, extended family and the community. The pressure is extensive,” Sihombing said in the press briefing last Wednesday.
Hina distanced herself from her family by moving out in 2016 after she was allocated a public housing unit. Eager to explore the outside world, she was thrilled when she was offered a teaching job in the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai, in nearby Guangdong province, where she had obtained her bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language.
When her parents learned about her decision to leave Hong Kong, they tried to prevent her from leaving home. She eventually had to lie to them and say she would marry her cousin. After returning to her family home, Hina quickly packed her bags and left for Zhuhai one morning at 4 am.
“I would rather be a rebellious daughter than let [my parents] commit a sin, because forced marriage is a sin. I would rather be hated by God than have my parents judged by God,” said Hina, who is a Muslim.
During her two years in Zhuhai, Hina would still get messages from her family lamenting her escape. Although she had managed to escape the marriage, her younger sister ended up marrying their first cousin around two years later. They stayed together only a few months before getting divorced.
That was a wake-up call for Hina’s father, who saw how a forced marriage had brought his daughter a great deal of unhappiness. Hina moved back to Hong Kong and gradually reconciled with her family while helping her sister with her divorce.
Asked how she overcame resentment towards her family, Hina, who is now happily married and has a son, said she was never mad at her father.
“For my parents to raise four children in Hong Kong, they overcame a lot of obstacles. For 100 things they have done, they did 99 of them right and just one wrong. We make mistakes all the time too. My father is also just a human,” she said.
Marriage annulment
In March last year, Hong Kong’s Family Court handed down a landmark judgement which nullified a marriage that lacked consent. The 22-year-old petitioner, identified by the court as “W,” told Judge Thelma Kwan that her father and relatives had exerted immense pressure on her to marry her paternal first cousin during a trip to Pakistan in March 2020.
After being beaten by her father with a cane, W, who came to Hong Kong when she was three, gave in and married her cousin that May for fear of further physical abuse. The marriage was not consummated and W returned to Hong Kong in July that year, while her husband remained in Pakistan.
Kwan ruled that there was evidence supporting W’s claims and her father had inflicted physical violence on her and that she had “lived in fear of continuous violence from her father.”
“Based on the evidence before this Court, I find that her will was overborne by genuine and reasonably held fear of physical harm, and her agreement to the marriage was overshadowed by this fear so as to ‘destroy the reality of her consent’,” Kwan wrote, ruling the marriage should be declared invalid.
Awareness
To tackle forced marriage in Hong Kong, the Zubin Foundation said the first step was to improve understanding of the issue, especially among teachers, social workers and doctors. They should learn that the forced marriage process often began in childhood, and child abuse may be involved.
A Forced Marriage Assistance List should be compiled to let different stakeholders know which civil society groups or official units to turn to when a forced marriage occurs, the NGO suggested.
Time to UnMute – Understanding Forced Marriage in Hong Kong by HKFP on Scribd
Hina, who is a teacher, said educators should look out for signs of forced marriage, or the beginning of the process, among students. Those facing forced marriage often lose interest in their education as they believe studying does not matter anymore.
Teachers, she said, should be trained to approach the issue carefully, as the usual practice of direct engagement with the parents, such as calling them to the school, may make matters worse.
The foundation said training guidelines must be “culturally appropriate,” while the government should also provide resources to teachers and other mandatory reporters to seek help if they were unsure about cultural nuances.
UK experience
Recognising that forced marriage was a global problem, the Zubin Foundation also invited experts from the UK to share their experiences.
Noorel Haque, joint head of the Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) under the UK Home Office, said Britain had introduced a civil measure, the forced marriage protection order, which offers tailored protection to individuals facing such situations.
The order could prevent an individual from being taken abroad, or demand their passport be surrendered. It could order them to have regular communication with social services or regular contact with the police to ensure their safety, Haque said.
If anyone breaches the court order, the protected person could call the police and hold the violator criminally liable under the Family Law Act, which would warrant a maximum penalty of five years behind bars.
Alternatively, if they do not want to pursue a criminal route, they could seek an order from the family court. Anyone who does not comply with the court order would be seen as committing contempt and could face imprisonment of up to two years.
“These threats basically are good enough to make the perpetrators change their behaviour toward the victim or the potential victim,” the FMU joint chief said.
Rashid Begum, a survivor of forced marriage and a former British police officer and senior lawyer, told HKFP last Thursday that legislation was key to protect those who were being pressured or forced to marry.
Citing her personal experience, Begum said prosecution was sometimes the only appropriate response. She was taken on a trip to Pakistan where she was told to marry a distant cousin shortly after she turned 18, and was “shoved onto a concrete floor” after objecting.
Begum managed to flee the village with her mother and later returned to the UK, but she faced strong pressure from elders trying to change her mind. In one extreme instance, she was stabbed with a pair of scissors, and eventually decided to run away from home.
Harassment continued after Begum escaped, with her family members hiring private investigators to find out her new workplace and home address. She later sought help from law enforcement and confronted her family at a police station, which allowed her to “take back some control.”
Begum went on to become a police officer herself and later qualified as a lawyer in the hope of stopping others from suffering the same trauma.
Begum acknowledged that prosecution was not the “full answer” to combating forced marriage since victims often do not want to turn their parents or family members in.
In Hina’s case, she knew there was the option of calling the police when she was under pressure to get married. But she did not want her parents to become criminals, they were not “bad people,” she said.
“It is very hard for other people to understand the filial piety in the brown community,” she said.
While critics argued that specifically outlawing forced marriage may force the issue underground, Begum said the issue was already a “hidden crime.” Legislation would enable the authorities to offer “positive responses” to victims when they report danger, she said.
“[Legislation] is not the only answer. But for those people who need it, should it not be there?” Begum asked.
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