LONDON: An international conference on forced marriages has turned the focus on the Indian Diaspora after a woman from Punjab claimed that her sister set herself ablaze as she was allegedly forced into a violent marriage by their parents.

Jasvinder Sanghera, living in Derby, said her sister Robina was driven to suicide after she was told that she could not leave her husband because her family would be ashamed. When her sister killed herself, Sanghera herself was on the run from home because she had refused to marry a man her parents had lined up for her from the age of eight.

She told the European Union Forced Marriages Conference that she still held people accountable for the death of Robina.

(Jasvinder Sanghera's book Shame, is social commentary and a true story on a sad state of affairs - the mistreatment of British Asian women by their own community and parents.)
 

The two-day conference, hosted by the foreign office and the European Commission's Daphne Fund, was aimed at allowing the UK's forced marriage unit to share its experience with other countries.

Robina was taken out of school at the age of 15, forced to marry, and then to move to Germany with her husband. But at the age of 24 she sought help, Sanghera said. She told delegates at Lancaster House, ''Robina suffered physical and mental abuse. I begged her to leave her partner but she said to me, 'It's ok for you to say that but you don't have the authority because you are disowned.'' ''She was right. The people who could make the difference were my parents, family and community leaders. That's where she went and they sent her back, saying she should make the marriage work,'' Sanghera added.