Sakina Muhammad Jan has become the first person in Australia to be jailed under forced marriage laws.
She was found guilty of pressurizing her daughter, Ruqia Haidari, to marry Mohammad Ali Halimi in 2019 in exchange for a small payment. Six weeks after the marriage, Haidari was killed. During Halimi’s sentencing for the murder in 2021, it was revealed that he had been violent and abusive towards Haidari.
Jan, who is in her late 40s, was an Afghan Hazara refugee who fled persecution from the Taliban and migrated to Australia with her five children in 2013.
The trial revealed that Haidari had been previously forced into an unofficial religious marriage at the age of 15 and did not want to marry again until she was older. Despite this, Jan coerced her into the marriage, disregarding her wishes and abusing her power as a mother.
Though Jan maintains her innocence and expresses grief over her daughter’s death, she was sentenced to at least a year in jail, with a total sentence of three years, for the “intolerable pressure” she placed on her daughter.
Forced marriage laws in Australia, introduced in 2013, carry a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus noted that forced marriage is the most reported slavery-like offense in Australia, with 90 cases reported to federal police in 2022-23.
The Australian government has been working to combat the practice and recently established an Anti-Slavery Commissioner to address exploitation claims.
