Translator: Rosa Baranda Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Thank you.
I would like to thank TED for the platform.
I was somebody who was born in England, and I was taught to be silent.
I was taught that to speak outside your family or outside your community,
you dishonoured your family.
So it is a privilege to be here, to break the silence of so many people.
So I share this platform
with all those victims and survivors out there across the world.
I'd like to start by sharing with you a little bit about who I am,
the human being that stands before you today.
My father came to England in 1952.
Like many migrants, he was invited to England, in search of work,
he came from rural Punjab, he was a Sikh man.
My mother joined him later on in her life, and we were born.
I'm one of seven sisters, and I have one brother.
The only home I know is England; England is my home.
It's the only place I know.
We went to British schools in England,
and I watched many of my sisters,
35 years ago,
being taken out of British schools
to marry men they'd only ever met in photographs.
They would disappear one by one,
and nobody questioned their absences;
nobody asked where they were.
And they were flown to India to marry this man in this photograph.
In fact, my sister Raveena was two years older than me.
She returned as somebody's wife
and was put back into my year at school.
She had a wedding ring on her finger;
her appearance completely changed
because she was no longer allowed to wear Western dress.
And yet nobody asked where she had been.
I was 14 years old when I came home from school one day,
a normal school kid, in England,
and my mother sat me down, and she presented me with a photograph
of the man, I was to learn, I was promised to from the age of eight.
And I was the one who said no.
I remember looking at this picture and thinking as a 14-year-old girl,
"He's shorter than me."
And then thinking about homework and things.
My mother was very matter-of-fact,
very jovial, she did this with all my sisters,
and by the way, none of my sisters protested; not one said no.
So here was my mother
faced with this child of hers who was protesting,
and she said to me I was difficult from birth,
I was the only one born in a hospital, the only one born upside-down,
and so she was expecting this somehow.
(Laughter)
So I was allowed to go back to school,
but the pressure really mounted when I was 15 and a half.
Because growing up in England
did not actually give me the same life as my peers.
We were brought up to believe that we had the power
to honour or dishonour our families through our behaviour.
So there were certain things that we were not allowed to do
as normal adolescents growing up.
For example, we were not allowed to go to the school disco;
we were not allowed to cut our hair; we were not allowed to wear makeup;
we were not allowed to even talk to a boy,
let alone date a boy;
we had to dress very modestly.
Because all these things were deemed right and proper and honourable.
So if we breached any of those codes,
and I call them codes because it was conditioning:
we were learnt to do this through our behaviour,
and we were ruled by fear.
These were the rules of engagement,
and if we breached them, we put ourselves at risk.
It could be a trigger for significant harm,
physical abuse, a forced marriage,
and we know today, even murder.
So we were very careful;
hence, you hear a lot of these girls living two lives,
doing things in secret, away from their family and their community's eyes.
When I was 15 and a half
that was when the preparations were happening for my wedding.
And I really protested.
So my family took me out of education,
and they held me a prisoner in my own home.
And when I mean prisoner, I mean I'm locked in a room,
and the padlock is on the outside of the door.
Somebody's watching the door.
I have to knock to go to the bathroom.
Food is brought to the door for me to eat.
And I was made to stay there until I agreed to the marriage.
In the end I agreed to the marriage purely to buy back my freedom.
This was a time for me to plan my escape.
And I was expected to take part in the preparation of this marriage.
You know, the wedding dress, people come to see the bride.
I can only describe it to you
as somebody who had a bird's eye view and was looking down,
and it happened to be my wedding.
I ran away from home when I was 16 years old.
In my final year of school, the most important year of school,
during my exams, I ran away over 150 miles from where I lived;
I thought it would be safe there.
My parents reported me missing to the police,
and the police did find me.
And here was an officer, 33 years ago,
a police officer presented with this young person,
begging him not to send her home.
Pleading him.
And thankfully, that police officer gave me the right response.
One, he believed me.
Two, he did not send me home to mediate with my family
and treat me like this stroppy little teenager who could actually work this out.
Because I can tell you this today as I stand here before you:
had he sent me home, I would be in that marriage.
My parents would have presented a different face.
Once the door closed, it would have been a very different world.
But the officer did tell me to ring home to tell my parents I was safe and well,
which is exactly what I did.
I'd like to share with you my family's response.
I'd also like to tell you it was my mother and the females in my family
who were the key perpetrators,
not the men.
I'm ashamed to say that women do uphold these honour systems
and are the gatekeepers to this abuse.
My mother was very clear.
She said, "You either come home and marry who we say,
or from this day forward you are dead in our eyes,"
that I had shamed them, I had dishonoured them,
I had done this to them.
So here I was at a crossroads in my life.
And I had a choice to make, and it was a choice.
I could have gone back home, to everything I'd had ever known,
or be on the outside, as somebody who was now disowned.
I chose the latter.
And there are many victims out there who have to make that choice.
But what I didn't expect was disownment.
It's like me asking you to imagine waking up tomorrow morning
and never seeing a member of your family ever again
or never seeing your familiar surroundings and everything you love
and being made to feel it was your fault.
Because that's how they made me feel.
I internalized that as guilt and as shame.
I attempted to take my life twice, in my teenage years.
I felt horrible because, Had I loved my parents less?
Had I done this to them?
And I started to live my life, albeit without my family.
I had a secret relationship with my sister Raveena.
We would talk in secret, sometimes disowned human beings
have secret relationships with their siblings.
And my sister Raveena suffered a horrific marriage.
She would tell me
how she was being psychologically and physically abused on a regular basis,
and I would say to her: "Leave your husband, and come and live with me.
I will protect you and look after you."
And she would say, "That's easy for you to say,
because you don't have to think about what people think;
you don't have to think about honour," which translates as, "Is it?"
Because she was right, I was disowned.
So I begged her to speak to my parents, and she did.
She spoke to them and our community leaders, and they all did the same thing:
they all mediated and talked her into going back to the perpetrator.
My sister was 24 years old
when she set herself on fire, and she committed suicide.
For whose honour?
And my family's response was this:
It was better for her to take her life and not dishonour the family
than for her to leave her husband.
As a result of her death, I came out of hiding,
and I established a charity called Karma Nirvana.
That was established in my front room, 20 years ago.
And that charity is now a national charity,
and it goes on to support victims like Shafilea Ahmed.
This young girl was born in Britain.
This young girl's crime in life was to have ambition.
Her ambition was to be a lawyer.
She wants to be a normal adolescent,
all those things you take for granted every single day
are the kinds of things we can be significantly harmed for.
This young girl ran away from home many times.
She went to five organizations -
police, health, teachers, you name it, they were there -
and she was telling them, "This is happening to me.
My family are abusing me because they think I'm too 'Westernised'.
And if you don't protect me,
they will take me abroad, and they will force me into a marriage."
Shafilea was very clear;
she ran away from home several times,
and she was constantly talked into going back home.
Because it's cultural, isn't it?
It's what we do.
You know, it's part of my culture.
I can tell you this: cultural acceptance does not mean accepting the unacceptable.
It is not part of my tradition, culture, or religion to abuse anybody.
And professionals need to wake up and own that as a fact.
I know there are many professionals out there, as I go on my travels,
who try to rationalize this, but what they did in her case -
not in my case thankfully, and I'm here to tell the tale -
is that they try to sit down and mediate with perpetrators.
Because the sad thing is, the people doing this to you
are the people who are meant to love you the most.
Your parents, and your siblings,
your wider community.
So in the end Shafilea went back home,
after many times of running away and telling people,
and she's now in a plane to Pakistan.
Her parents drugged her and put her in a plane to Pakistan.
She's 16 and a half.
And she's on that plane, she goes to Pakistan,
and she's presented with a marriage proposal
because they wanted to deal with her being too Westernised
through a forced marriage.
And she swallowed half a bottle of bleach in protest.
She came back to Britain, she was in one of our hospitals in the UK,
on a ward for eight weeks, where nobody visited her.
Where did they return her, the protective agencies?
Back to her family.
Within a few weeks, I can tell you, her mother and father murdered her.
She was 17 years old.
They held her down,
and they put a carrier bag down her throat until it disappeared,
suffocated her, and her siblings were told to watch.
They were convicted last year of 25 years. This is what we call honour killings.
We know there is no honour in an honour killing;
however, the motivation for the crime is honour-related.
These are the kind of girls that ring our helpline every single day.
I established the only network helpline in 2008,
to date that helpline has received over 30.000 calls
just in the UK alone.
This is happening to people born in Britain.
Please don't think that because I was born in the UK
I have the privilege of independence, of a free mind.
That could have been me.
And nobody could have told me this at 16.
I have three beautiful children.
It's the first time I share their picture here with you all.
And nobody could have told me at 16 years old
I was making that decision for the future.
At 16 years old, what do you know? Really?
You know, I just didn't want to marry a stranger.
But the legacy is important, and we need the victims to own,
and I'm testimony to that, as are many thousands.
You can live your life, albeit disowned.
We know, and I miss my family terribly, I do.
You know, I was the only one that graduated at university.
I hadn't read a book until I was 27 years old.
It was the first time I ever read a book in my life.
And I achieved my degree, and I got a first, by the way,
and I remember wanting my father to be in the audience.
But my father wasn't there.
He refused to come.
When he died, he left me an executor of his will.
So he spoke a thousand words in his death.
I remember for the first time going to my house where I was brought up,
opening the door, going to his bedroom,
and in the corner of his wall was my graduation picture on the wall.
But he couldn't say that when he was alive.
And I know that deep within him, he knew what was right,
but the power of an honour system is so great
that it only exists because people allow it to,
not just within our families, but within our communities.
When girls like Shafilea are murdered,
I don't hear our communities crying out and saying this is wrong.
I don't.
I put myself at risk, yes, but I fundamentally believe
there are thousands out there just like me, like Shafilea,
and we need to break that silence.
Because nobody should have to go through with a forced marriage.
And we do it, and we do it for the future.
My daughter, Natasha, on the far right,
when she was growing up, I used to say to her,
"Tasha, whatever you do, do not marry an Asian boy."
And she would say, "Mum, you can't say that, that's racist."
And I used to say, "Natasha, no, you don't marry a boy, you marry a family."
The reason I say this to you is because I was her mother;
I'd run away from home, I'm twice divorced,
I married out of cast, I'm a campaigner.
What family is going to accept that?
They might take it out on my daughter, and that was my biggest fear.
Because one of the things I had to do when I left home and they disowned me,
I had to divorce myself from all the wonderful things about my tradition
because of the pain.
And I miss that.
Diwali was this week, it's a Sikh significant festival.
I know Sikhism and Islam does not support forced marriage or honour killings.
In fact it supports me.
But we miss that culture and that tradition.
But I had to do that because of the pain.
You can only embrace that if you have people to embrace it with.
They are your family.
So my daughter goes off to university, and she meets an Indian boy.
(Laughter)
As they do.
Your children will do the opposite of what you ask them to.
And for the first time in my life,
here I met a family that did the right thing.
That were born in Britain, raised their children here
and taught them to be free and independent.
I did say to the mother, though,
"You need to read my book before I meet you,"
because she needed to understand my experience.
And last year - thank you, next slide -
my daughter was married!
She had the big fat Indian wedding, okay?
(Laughter)
And not one of my family were there.
But you know what?
She had that day because of the decision her mother made when she was 16 years old.
She had the right to choose who she wanted to marry.
It also challenged me
because I can finally put to rest the past.
The only time my life was on hold
was when I beat myself up every single day for what my family had done to me.
When Raveena died, I turned it around,
and I earned the fact I was not the bad guy, I was not the perpetrator,
they had done this to me.
My honour was their shame, so I let them go, I forgave them,
and I started to live my life instead of putting it on hold.
And my campaign is for you to go out there today
and break our silences, please,
because we exist,
and we are wanting to believe that even without our families
there is a world out there for us,
and you out there believe that this is happening,
and it's happening to people who live in a democracy.
They do not have the right to an education and independence.
The privilege doesn't come being in Britain;
those privileges were not my rights,
my rights were taken away from me.
Because I had a family who believed their rights
trumped the rights of the country being Britain.
Thank you very much for listening to me.
(Applause)