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Hidden DaughtersINTRO:Hello, I'm Mark Hertsgaard in San Francisco, and welcome to Spotlight, Link TV's investigative news show, featuring documentaries from around the world, reporting stories usually missed by American television.This week our spotlight is on the teenage daughters of Islamic immigrants in Europe. The parents of these girls want to raise them in the traditional, Islamic way: no dating, no boyfriends, a girl stays home until a marriage is arranged for her. Some daughters accept this, but those who resist, face a difficult, even dangerous future. Some parents in effect abduct their daughters and return them to the old country, where the girls are re-educated and forced into marriages with unwanted relatives or strangers. We'll be back afterwards with an update. For now, from Danish Public Television's DRTV, here is "Hidden Daughters," on Link TV, your connection to the world. OUTRO:Welcome back. You're watching "Link TV Spotlight". I'm Mark Hertsgaard. The film you've just seen only hints at the violence often directed against Islamic women. Perhaps nowhere is the problem more acute than in Pakistan. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reports that thousands of women are abducted, raped, deliberately burned or killed every year. And often it's the women, not their abusers, who get blamed. Take the case of Mukhtaran Mai. Village elders ordered the woman gang- raped because her brother got too friendly with a girl of higher status. Ms. Mai filed criminal charges and actually won a guilty verdict against her rapists. But in March 2005 a regional court reversed that decision and acquitted the men. Outrage at home and abroad soon led the High Court of Pakistan to reinstate the guilty verdict. But that didn't save Ms. Mai from further punishment. Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf personally ordered her passport taken away--to keep her from traveling abroad, he said, and ruining Pakistan's good name. Nor is Denmark the only European nation where Islamic women are threatened. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a member of the Dutch parliament. But she was born in Somalia and in 1992 her Islamic parents ordered her to marry a distant cousin in Canada. Instead, she fled to the Netherlands, where she became an outspoken champion of Islamic women's rights. Ms. Ali insists that honor killings take place in Europe as well. In 2004, there were 11 honor killings in a single Dutch province, she says, and another six in the German capital, Berlin. If you want to find out more about these issues, check out the resources listed at the end of this program. You can also find those resources at our website, linktv.org. Following those listings you'll see a clip from next week's program. Until then, this is Mark Hertsgaard in San Francisco for Link TV: Spotlight. Thank you for joining us.
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