Labour MP Naz Shah has told Sky News about the abuse her mother faced – and how it led her to kill the man she knew as “uncle”.
She said society needs to “flip the shame” of the South Asian concept of ‘izzat’, or honour – just as Gisèle Pelicot did for survivors of rape.
Ms Shah was speaking to Sarah-Jane Mee on The UK Tonight about her new memoir Honoured: Survival, Strength And My Path to Politics.
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“My first memory was of my dad beating my mum,” Ms Shah said.
Her father ran away with a neighbour when she was six. But her mother, Zoora, faced more abuse, from a man called Azam who she knew as “uncle”.
She added: “You have a 23-year-old with three young children… and then you’re exploited sexually. Now we understand, you know, the vulnerability of that woman.
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“If you picture a 23-year-old in a country that isn’t where she’s been born, doesn’t understand the language, with three kids living in rented accommodation, living in abject poverty. Totally isolated by her circumstances.”
Azam initially seemed the “knight in shining armour”. As Zoora couldn’t get a mortgage, Azam used Zoora’s money for a deposit to buy a house. He then sexually abused her over years.
Following more than a decade of abuse and worries he would start abusing Ms Shah and her siblings, Zoora killed Azam by giving him a fatal dose of arsenic. She was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“She gets sentenced to 20 years in prison because she’s seen as a woman who was just trying to have this house, rather than the destitute, desperate woman that she actually was at the time,” Ms Shah said.
The Bradford West MP said the justice system isn’t equal for women, and needs to change.
“There are still organisations that work for women who are in prison… who have killed as a result of domestic violence and abuse. So there are things that we need to change.”
‘Women bear burden of shame’
Ms Shah said it was the honour system that stopped her mother speaking out – and that today, her mother’s case would have been seen much differently.
She told Sky News: “From my mother’s perspective, the whole concept of honour was the thing that held her back. And I remember the foreman of the jury at the time saying once he learned about her story, he said, ‘had I known about this, then potentially I wouldn’t have found her guilty for murder’.”
That concept of ‘izzat’ – which Zoora lost when her husband left her – meant she didn’t reveal the truth about Azam’s killing in an attempt to regain honour for her family.
“The idea is that the women bear the burden of shame and men bask in honour,” Ms Shah said.
She wants the South Asian community to throw off that patriarchal concept, and put the shame back on to men for their own negative actions – just as France’s Gisèle Pelicot has done for survivors of rape.
“It’s just literally like Gisèle Pelicot was talking about, we need to flip the shame. It is exactly the same concept,” Ms Shah added.
