Parents force daughters to fly home to Pakistan for arranged marriages
It’s a well-kept secret in Pakistani homes across New York city: Young women violently forced to return to their homeland for arranged marriages. In homes throughout the metropolitan area, violence against thousands of young women who are forced to go back to Pakistan to wed is shamelessly hushed as a “family matter.”
“Eighty percent of the community has this problem” in New York, said Bazah Roohi of the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights (ANAA). “Women don’t have their own choice.
“They try to fight. They are unsuccessful. Parents are very strict. They just beat them and take them to Pakistan.
“Their fathers and brothers say, “This is [a] family problem,'” said Roohi. “Then [the girls] disappear.”