Sputnik
May 12, 2017
With the summer vacation approaching, the “high season” of forced marriages, where young girls are often lured abroad to be married off, is creeping closer, the Swedish police have warned. Despite their efforts, the Swedish authorities seem unable to do anything about it.
According to statistics from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå), 81 cases of forced marriage, abduction and deception with the intention to marry somebody off were reported last year. The majority of these cases happened during the summer vacation and involved high school children, which is quite an embarrassment for Sweden, whose “feminist” government sees itself as a champion of woman’s rights.
“During the vacation, young people can leave the country without anyone in their vicinity, such as school teachers or friends responding to their disappearance,” Jenny Edin, prosecutor for honor-related crimes at the National Operations Department (Noa) said in a statement on the police’s website.
Afterwards, girls return to the class in autumn already married. Sometimes they even stay in another country. It also happens that the girls themselves respond. If they manage to get to a phone, they may call the Swedish embassy in the country they are in, the Swedish authorities or simply someone they know in Sweden. In these cases the police are able to find out what has happened and start proceedings, the police statement said.
In Sweden, forced marriage is a crime that leads to up to four years in prison, yet offenses of this kind are often next to impossible to solve, especially if they happened in another country. Another obstacle is that the victims are forced to testify against their own families in court, a frightening perspective which many would like to avoid. This is why no one has been sentenced since the law penalizing…