Ellee Seymour

Thankfully, new laws to protect women from being forced into arranged marriages should be introduced by the end of the year.  Victims could even sue for damages.  I only hope all the legal technicalities have been considered, like if the marriage takes place in another country, will it still be bound by British law if the couple return here to live?

I guess that’s one of the questions I could ask when the Conservative Women’s Muslim Group hold a panel discussion called “Marriage - A Woman’s Choice?” with Sayeeda Warsi, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, who has a happy arranged marriage, and Jasvinder Sanghera, whose compelling book Shame is a true story describing the mistreatment of British Asian women by their own community and parents.

She can speak from personal experience because when Jasvinder was 15 and in her final year of school, her parents showed her a photo of man, saying that was the man she would marry within two weeks.Jasvinder refused, but her parents continued to plan the wedding. Her family kept Jasvinder locked in the bedroom, until one day, she ran away.

Following her escape, Jasvinder spent her teens sleeping rough on the streets. She pleaded with her parents to let her return home, but they said that in their eyes “she was dead”. Her seven sisters all went through with their arranged marriages, three of them travelled to India at the age of 16 and 17.

Tragically, one of her sisters who was trapped in an abusive and an unhappy marriage, and unable to get any support from their mother, killed herself by setting fire to herself.

Jasvinder turned her painful experience into something positive by helping other Asian women in the same helpless and tormented situation. She is the co-founder of Karma Nirvana, a community based project that supports South Asian women whose lives are affected by domestic violence and honour based crimes.

Sadly, Surjit Athwal didn’t make that contact, the group was most likely not not set up by then. She is suspected of being murdered by her husband and mother-in-law as a result of having a love affair following her failed arranged marriage. I found the newspaper article very unfair: “Mother-in-law ‘lured a cheating wife to her death’. It must have been written by a man.

This panel discussion sounds like really powerful stuff, and I don’t see how I can miss this. It is being held on Tuesday, 22nd May from 6-8pm in the House of Commons, anyone else interested in attending should contact Elaine.Hall@conservatives.com

It has to be one of the cheapest health cures around - using flesh eating maggots to help successfully treat MRSA  patients in record time. But is there really no alternative from today’s high-tech modern medicine?

Some sceptics would ask if they were they simply being used as a cost-saving  alternative to expensive antibiotic gels and lotions, an idea suggested by Labour MP Madeleine Moon. She described it as “a highly cost-effective, highly efficient but forgotten and undervalued method of treatmentâ€?.

Despite its apparent success on treating diabetics, using maggots to clean festering wounds has not been a triumph in America with squeamish patients giving it the thumbs down.

Leeches are also being used to drain excess blood, a remedy dating back to ancient Egypt, I wonder what other creepy crawlies could also be used to provide cures. These ancient treatments have obviously been proven over hundreds of years, it’s interesting to see how we are turning the clock back.

How would you feel about being treated this way? After childbirth, and one with no pain relief, I find I have quite a high tolerance level and  believe I could go  along with it if I had to, if it was the best treatment available. 

I wonder if other countries are still using these remedies because they have no access to modern medicine, and which other ancient cures they are still be practising, in African villages, for example.