Keighley MP Ann Cryer is urging the Asian community to support calls by a working party to get tough on forced marriages.

Mrs Cryer, who is a fierce opponent of forced marriages, believes new legislation will have to be introduced if the community fails to act.

A working party, which has looked into the practice said to involve 1,000 British Asian women a year, is due to publish its recommendations later this month.

It is expected to argue that forced marriages should be put on the same footing as domestic violence and child abuse, stressing it contravenes women's human right.

It is unlikely to call for changes in the law, concluding that existing offences, such as kidnap, rape and assault, are sufficient to curb the practice. Mrs Cryer, who has been approached for help by a number of women in her constituency, said: "We need community leaders to admit there is a problem and that the practice is intolerable and has to stop because it is un-Islamic.

"We don't need extra laws now, but at the end of the day, if it continues to happen, new law will have to go on the statute book.

"When you ask Asian community leaders they say there is no problem. They are not owning up.

"One of my cases involves two girls from Keighley who were taken to Pakistan and were sat in front of a man and a gun put next to their heads. That is awful.

"When I go to functions., I have women coming up to me and saying I'm doing the right thing. They say they are very happy and I am taking the right line.

"More and more girls in the Keighley and Bradford areas don't take the same view as their older sisters and mothers and the community must come to terms with the fact that there is a problem and do something about it."

Bara Gora, Asian women project co-ordinator at Keighley Domestic Violence Forum, said more women were becoming aware of the their services and there had been a significant increase in the number of women seeking help in the last couple of years.

"Among our work we deal with women who are forced by their families to marry in Britain and when that marriage breaks down they have no recourse to anybody for help. That is where we step in and let them know of the services that are available and what options they can take," she added.

She believed it was because their services were getting a higher profile in the community that more cases were coming forward.

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