BBC Views Online’s front page just now links to Women resist ‘honour’ marriages

, a story about violence and threats of violence against the family of five female cousins, now aged 14 to 22, who were ordered nine years ago by ‘village elders’ to be married to the boys of another family in settlement of a dispute.

Whilst BBC Views Online goes into some detail about the tragic circumstances of these unfortunate girls (sadly not uncommon in their part of the world) and their “religious marriage ceremony, called a sharai nikah”, the BBC have, for some unknown reason, managed to omit a crucial word or two of useful background information. Either of these words would have done. They begin with ‘m’ and ‘i’.

Update: Marc of USS Neverdock comments that the BBC’s omission’s from this report go much further than omitting the ‘m’ and/or ‘i’ words. According to the Telegraph, Blood debt women offered up for rape:

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood “marriages”.

The women, who are cousins, were married in absentia by a mullah in their Punjabi village to illiterate sons of their family’s enemies in 1996, when they were aged from six to 13.

The marriages were part of a compensation agreement ordered by the village council and reached at gunpoint after the father of one of the girls shot dead a family rival.

…

In addition to the sentence on the women, the village council has sentenced to death Jehan Khan Niazi, the father of three of the women, and the fathers of the other two for failing to honour the supposed bond with men whose identities they are not even certain of.

The women have said they will commit suicide if their fathers obey the council.

– the reality therefore is so much more awful than the BBC’s namby-pamby token coverage. Worse, a scandalous story like this doesn’t even get a look in on the BBC’s television news – they’re too busy following every last minute of George Best’s dying days. It’s sad to see a character like Best on his death bed, and it is worth a mention in passing, but it doesn’t (yet at least) merit full-length coverage high up in the running order (like on this evening’s Six O’Clock News) when there are stories like this one or the ongoing famine in Niger that are so much more deserving of our attention.