Originally published 2020-10-31.
Photo: REMIX NEWS
In October 2020, France expelled five members of a Bosnian family living in Besançon after a court convicted them of beating their 17-year-old daughter and shaving her head because she wanted to marry a young Serbian Christian man. The girl's parents and three of her siblings were flown to Sarajevo on Saturday 24 October 2020 with a five-year ban on returning to France. The girl stayed behind in the care of child welfare services and was promised a residence permit when she turned 18.
Early international reports said an aunt and uncle were deported too. That was not the case: both were convicted alongside the parents, but they held refugee status in France and were not expelled. Here is what happened, how the French courts handled it, and what the case tells us about so-called "honour" violence.
What happened in August 2020
The girl, whose name was not published, had been in a relationship with a 20-year-old man from a Serbian Orthodox Christian family. The two families knew each other and, according to accounts given in court, got on well until the young couple began talking about marriage. At that point the girl's parents objected on religious grounds.
The couple ran away together for four days. When they came back, on 17 August 2020, the girl was taken to her bedroom and beaten by four adults: her mother, her father, her uncle and her aunt. Her uncle then shaved her head. The boyfriend's family, who were present, reported the assault to police.
A forensic medical report recorded broken ribs and multiple bruises and gave her 14 days of total incapacity for work, a standard French measure of how serious an injury is. Her lawyer told the court the shaving was meant to strip her of her beauty and femininity.
The trial and the sentences
The four adults appeared before the criminal court in Besançon. They admitted to one or two slaps at most and denied any beating. The father said he shaved his daughter's head as a punishment for running away, and the uncle compared the haircut to a fine. Their lawyers suggested older bruises might have come from elsewhere. At this trial the family also denied a religious motive.
Besançon's public prosecutor, Étienne Manteaux, called the facts extremely serious and asked for a year in prison for each defendant. On 23 October 2020 the court sentenced all four to one year in prison, four months of it suspended. The parents were also banned from French territory for five years.
The uncle and aunt appealed. On 15 December 2020 the appeal court in Besançon upheld their conviction and sentence and added a mandatory citizenship course. The parents did not appeal.
The expulsion and the ministers' role
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin had spoken out in August, calling the attack barbaric and promising that removal would follow once the courts had finished. Within a day of the verdict, the parents and three children were detained, taken to a detention centre in Metz and put on a flight from Nancy to Sarajevo. Darmanin announced the expulsion on Twitter, crediting Citizenship Minister Marlène Schiappa:
Comme nous nous étions engagés avec @MarleneSchiappa, la famille qui s’en est pris lâchement à leur fille et nièce en la frappant et allant jusqu’à la tondre de force parce qu’elle était amoureuse d’un homme d’une autre confession, a été expulsée ce matin. 👇 pic.twitter.com/KXKLpnpvKb
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) October 24, 2020
A joint statement from the two ministers said the government had acted because of the family's unacceptable behaviour, in particular the beating and shaving of a teenage girl in love with a young man of another faith. Remix News, which first carried the story in English, attributed some background comments to a "Margaret Parietti"; French local reporting names the prosecutor in the case as Étienne Manteaux, so that attribution could not be confirmed.
Darmanin had earlier said the uncle and aunt, who arrived in 2016 with refugee status, had no business remaining in France. Refugee protection is governed by strict legal rules, however, and local press reported in December 2020 that they had not been removed.
What "honour" violence is
Violence like this is usually called honour-based abuse. It covers threats, beatings, forced marriage and, at the extreme, murder, carried out by relatives who believe a family member, nearly always a woman or girl, has shamed them. The trigger is often a relationship, a marriage choice or behaviour the family sees as a threat to its reputation.
The United Nations has estimated that about 5,000 women and girls are killed in honour killings each year, a figure that is hard to pin down because "honour" has no fixed legal definition and many cases are never reported as such. Cases are reported most often in parts of the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, but also in Europe and the Americas, including among diaspora communities. UN reports have listed cases in countries as varied as Brazil, Canada, India, Italy, Pakistan, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
Culture, not a single religion
It is a common myth that honour violence belongs to one faith. Cases have been recorded among families of several faiths, including Muslim, Hindu and Christian ones, and the Council of Europe describes its roots as cultural rather than religious. Many Muslim scholars and organisations condemn honour killings as contrary to Islam; Egypt's former Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa is among those who have spoken against them. Europe has its own history here too: until 1975, France's penal code allowed reduced punishment for a husband who killed an adulterous wife.
Why the case mattered in France
The Besançon case came at a time of intense debate in France about violence against women, separatism and integration, a week after the murder of teacher Samuel Paty. The government wanted to show it would act firmly, and the speed of the expulsion was unusual. What nobody disputed was that a teenager had been badly hurt by the people meant to protect her.
For the girl, the legal outcome meant safety from her attackers but also separation from her siblings. Her lawyer said she would have liked to say goodbye to them before they left.
Where to find help
Anyone facing threats or violence from family over a relationship can get help. In France, the free and anonymous helpline for women facing violence is 3919, and children and teenagers can call 119. In an emergency, call 17 or 112. In the UK, Karma Nirvana runs a national helpline on honour-based abuse and forced marriage. Teachers, doctors and social workers are trained to take these warning signs seriously, and in France, as in many countries, a minor at risk can be placed under child protection, as happened here.
Sources: maCommune.info, Besançon verdict (23 October 2020); maCommune.info, expulsion of five family members to Sarajevo; maCommune.info, appeal ruling (December 2020); Remix News, original English report; Wikipedia, Honor killing.
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