A mother has become the first person to be jailed under Australia’s forced marriage laws, for ordering her daughter to wed a man who would later murder the 21-year-old.
Sakina Muhammad Jan, who is in her late 40s, was found guilty of coercing Ruqia Haidari to marry 26-year-old Mohammad Ali Halimi in 2019, in exchange for a small payment.
Six weeks after the nuptials, Halimi killed his new bride - a crime for which he is now serving a life sentence.
On Monday, Jan - who pleaded not guilty - was sentenced to at least a year in jail, for what a judge called the “intolerable pressure” she had placed on her daughter.
Arranged marriage is not forced marriage. The arrangement is that you meet the potential suitor via family, and if things don’t work out that’s it. You’re not supposed to force or coerce a marriage, at least that’s how it is in most South Asian or Middle Eastern families who practice this
Edit the horror stories we read about in the news are usually about lower income or uneducated folks, most middle class or upper class families practicing arranged marriages don’t go around forcing things if a match doesn’t happen
I appreciate your reitetating. That was a mistake I made in my original comment. They are not the same and I should not have conflated them.