It was supposed to bear her name, Saman's name-- the law that would have helped girls like the young girl of Pakistani-origin, killed, because she rebelled against an arranged marriage and wished for the tools to be free. To say "No" to family-imposed obligations without running the risk of being coerced. But the law never made it to final approval.
'Saman's law' cashed last April, its first yes vote with 385 votes in favor, no votes against, and 31 abstentions by deputies from Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia; the same Meloni who is now the Prime Minister-to-be and who in the past, had been very vocal demanding justice for the victims.
The proposed law takes its name from the case of an 18-year-old Pakistani-origin girl, Saman Abbas, living in Novellara, Italy since 2016.
She had asked for help from the police and social services to escape a marriage arranged by her family in Pakistan. She was living in a safe house since then but she had returned home recently, trusting her parents to retrieve some documents. Since then, she is missing.
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Her parents, suddenly returned to Pakistan due to an alleged bereavement while the rest of her family disappeared. There's a video showing her father, uncles and a cousin dragging a big plastic bag and a couple of shovels. Her younger brother, found living with relatives in a nearby village, says she has been killed by the family. Her uncles have later been arrested and confessed the crime while her parents are still in Pakistan where the country refuses extradition for them.
Saman's body has not been recovered yet. Hers was the latest case of a long, bloodied string of Pakistani-origin girls being harrassed and killed in Italy.
So long that, in 2019, Law No. 69/2019, the so-called "Red Code," introduced a special criminal case to punish forced marriages. This provision stipulates that "Whoever, by violence or threat, forces a person to enter into marriage or civil union shall be punished by imprisonment from one to five years. The same punishment applies to anyone who, taking advantage of a person's conditions of vulnerability or mental inferiority or need, with abuse of family, domestic, labour relations or authority arising from the person's entrustment for reasons of care, education or upbringing, supervision or custody, induces him or her to contract marriage or civil union."
Thus, aggravating circumstances when the acts are committed against an eighteen year old or a minor of 14 years. The provisions of the article also apply when the act is committed abroad by an Italian citizen or foreigner residing in Italy or to the detriment of an Italian citizen or a foreigner residing in Italy.
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The Central Directorate of Criminal Police of the Department of Public Security has recently published the first Report on the "Red Code" Law which is aimed at analysing the phenomenon with the goal of countering it. From 9 August 2019 -- the date of its entry into force to 31 December 2021, there has been an increase in 'forced marriages.'
Fifty-nine percent of the victims are foreigners, mostly Pakistani, followed by Albanian. In 73% of cases the perpetrators were predominantly Pakistani, Albanian, Bengali, and Bosnian men. The data, moreover, is not accurate, because the "underground" is missing.
This crime, in fact, often takes place within the walls of the home and the victims are almost always young girls, forced to drop out of school, sometimes forced to remain locked in the house in the impossibility of reporting, even for fear of retaliation and do not even know who to turn to.
'Saman's law' was intended to go a step further stating that those who denounce the coercion to marry could obtain the issuance of a residence permit for humanitarian reasons, for a duration of one year, renewable as long as the humanitarian needs that justified its issuance, persist.
The immediate issuance of a residence permit to the victim will ensure that she can break free from the family of origin and no longer have to go back to his or her parents to beg for his or her papers, risking his or her life, as what happened to Saman. The law will also help girls who are still forced to live with their parents and follow their rules for all its difficulties, to get a residence permit on their own.
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The second generations are forced to carry the burden of the traditionalist Pakistani culture they are not part of, a culture very different from the culture of the country where they were born or raised. The Saman law will be a light in the dark for them.
It is not clear why Meloni's parlamentarians did not vote Saman's law, given her strong campaigning against the 'culture' pushing mainly Pakistani immigrants to kill or harras their daughters in Italy.
At anti-violence centers and social services, there are dozens of girls seeking help and trying to escape from unions arranged against their consent. They come mostly from Pakistan or Bangladesh, and are between 16 and 25 years old. Let's hope that the first Italian woman Prime Minister will do the right thing and Saman's law will be passed without further discussion.
Let's hope Saman, Hina, Sana and all the other Pakistani-origin girls killed by their families did not die in vain, and there will be justice for them. There's no honour in killing, and no 'culture' can justify the massacre of its daughters, in Italy or abroad. Never.
(Francesca Marino is a journalist and a South Asia expert who has written ‘Apocalypse Pakistan’ with B Natale. Her latest book is ‘Balochistan — Bruised, Battered and Bloodied’. She tweets @francescam63. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for his reported views.)
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