Aisha K. Gill
101
life imprisonment on August 3, 2012, the judge, Mr Justice Roderick Evans, described Shafilea as a
determined, able, and ambitious girl “squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life
that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life her parents wanted
to impose upon her” (Gill 2014: 195). However, the causal factors behind Shafilea’s murder were
far more complex than was suggested by the judge and also by the British media’s tale of back
ward parents acting against the backdrop of modern Britain’s progressive society. Understanding
the forms of violence experienced by minority ethnic women in Britain requires an approach that
takes account not only of the links between all forms of gender-based violence, but also addresses
the specificity of particular forms of VAW, such as HBV. A distinction must be drawn between the
wholesale condemnation of the culture of a specific social group and condemnation of a particular
cultural practice.
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