By NINA LAKHANI - THE INDEPDENDENT UK
Added: Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:00:00 UTC

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/forced-marriage-i-cant-forgive-or-forget-what-they-did-to-me-1732170.html

An NHS doctor from east London who was held hostage and forced into marriage has spoken for the first time about her four-month ordeal, during which she feared for her life.

Dr Humayra Abedin, who was freed from her vows on the orders of a Bangladeshi court soon after The Independent on Sunday highlighted her plight, described the humiliation and pain she suffered at the hands of her parents, some members of her extended family and nurses and doctors in a private psychiatric hospital in Bangladesh last year.

In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Dr Abedin told of the moment she was abducted: "My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background."

She was driven, kicking and screaming, to a private hospital, on the request of her family. During the journey, she was held down and gagged by three people as they tried to stop her shouting.

"This was the first time I thought, 'this is it, I am dying'," said Dr Abedin. "I begged them to stop." And so began the nightmare.

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.

Last December, Dr Abedin was dramatically freed after frantic efforts – highlighted by the IoS – by lawyers in the UK and Dhaka, together with Ask, a human rights NGO, led to her release. The majority of victims are not so lucky; hundreds of missing schoolchildren each year are feared to have been married off abroad by their families.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/forced-marriage-i-cant-forgive-or-forget-what-they-did-to-me-1732170.html

TAGGED: ABUSE, MORALITY, RELIGION