The latest little confected outrage is that British women who are victims of forced marriage in foreign climes must pay the Foreign Office the costs of their repatriation – yes, obviously they must, how else would you organise this? We’re not, quite obviously, going to start handing out free air tickets to everyone who wants to come home now, are we?
And that’s all that is happening here. If you’re abroad, you ask for consular help, you’ll get it. And if you need to get back to Britain then they’ll help you. Sort out transferring money from your bank to pay for a ticket, issue temporary travel documents, all sorts of things. Even, if you’ve got no money, lend you some to get the ticket to get back. The system does work.
All that’s happened here is someone getting outraged that women forced into marriage abroad have to use the same system as all the rest of us. And there’s a certain truth to the idea that British peeps in trouble abroad are British people in trouble abroad, we’re all equal in the way we should be treated, no?
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] British victims of forced marriages overseas are being asked by the Foreign Office to pay costs associated with their own rescue, it has been revealed. An investigation by the Times found those unable to cover flights, food and shelter were made to take out a loan. MPs have condemned the practice as “astonishing” and “immoral”. [/perfectpullquote]Sounds damned sensible to us.
For example, one of the erm, examples, used by The Times to show us all how appalling this is:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Government guidelines on how officials should deal with repatriating victims state that the Foreign Office “is obliged to ask the individual, [a] third party or trusted friends to fund the cost of repatriation”. In April 2017 police in Somaliland, an autonomous region in northern Somalia, raided a boarding school after Jasmin Osman, who was sent to the school when she was 19, escaped and called for help. They found 25 young women from across Europe and the US, including seven from Britain, who had been sent there by parents concerned that they were becoming too westernised. The women had been there for a year and reported being beaten and burnt for mispronouncing verses of the Koran. Other punishments included being locked in coffin-like enclosures with tiny airholes, soaked with cold water overnight, left in their own excrement, made to stare directly at the sun and being chained to walls. They were told that they could leave only if they got married. [/perfectpullquote]That’s appalling treatment, of course it is, and they should be helped out of that situation. But it’s not forced marriage now, is it? So, why should those trapped in such get the ticket home for free, these girls have to take out a loan to get one?
Well, no reason, obviously. Now go to the other end of the spectrum, someone on the Costa Del Boozo who has run out of cash and doesn’t have a ticket home. Should they get a freebie? Or have to take out a loan? Does it make a difference if it’s a bloke failing under his own steam or a women sent off into this slavery by her own family? Well, does it?
No, obviously not. Therefore consular officials will indeed help and aid but when cash has to be splashed if you’ve not got it then they lend it to you. How else would you run the system?
Consular assistance is there to assist you getting home, not paying for it. Paying for the costs incurred through criminal actions is entirely another department, and should be getting its arse in gear and dealing with it.
And any compassionate consular official who knows anything about their job would at least point the applicant towards where they can get such assistance back home. But their job is pure and simply to get them back home; not to investigate if a crime has occured, prosecute the offenders, and obtain compensation from them.
One wonders why the parents live in Britain if they don’t want their daughters becoming too “westernised”.
Rhetorical question, I know – they are here firstly because it’s a nicer place than where they originate from and secondly they are on a mission to convert us all to Islam so we can become part of the Caliphate.
Of course, the contradiction is that the first is only true because of the second. Once we are all forbidden from eating bacon (or any pork product) the country will be like all the other shiteholes.
Oh, Tim! How can you possibly expect women to pay for anything?
Just because giving free flights home to girls who were conned into visiting Somaliland on a single ticket (because they are thicker than two short planks) may be justified in itself does not mean that we should fund the return flights for all young women who choose to buy a single ticket instead of a return.
The solution is not so much to aggressively pursue the girls/young women to repay the loan as to prosecute the criminals who sent them abroad.
I didn’t read the entire story, but did the journo think to ask if any parents had been prosecuted for sending their daughters (assuming some were under 18) off to be forcibly married? That would seem a party you could sue to cover the costs of the repatriation.
Exactly! The UK Consular Service is a consular service, not a criminal investigation and prosecution service.