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Summary: The abductions usually take place at night, when, according to one activist, the girls' cries are not heard.
[19 November 2011] - The tradition of abduction of brides in Kyrgyzstan has become a social drama in which each year thousands of young women are raped, forced to lose her virginity and to marry against their will. “They seek out the prettiest of the people, they abduct them past 11 pm and the next morning, after sexual intercourse, are no longer children, but women,” said Saturday Tursunbek Akún, defender of the people of the Asian Republic. Akún believes that the abduction of brides is not a cultural tradition or a ritual, but a “wild and criminal” practice, and an attack on the dignity and the rights of women, which is why he has declared war. "We carry out a study and we have discovered that annually some 16,000 girls are abducted. How can exist something like in the 21st century? We are outraged,” he said. The Kyrgyz official intends to launch a national information campaign to explain to society the perversity of this practice, with the collusion of the political and religious authorities. "The police plays dumb. It's considered something normal when more than half of marriages which are born of a kidnapping end up in divorce and many children are left orphans”, Akún added. A macabre tradition Akún believes the tradition is born of the romantic Kyrgyz legend in the style of Romeo and Juliet of two young people in the 1930s who were in love, but her parents disapproved of their relationship, so they fled together to the mountains. “Some parents do not know what to do to protect their daughters, but others are accomplices, since they do not dare denounce the abduction. What choice do they have? If the raptor then rejects her daughter, nobody will want to marry her, because she is not a virgin”, he said. At best, the young raptor gives the parents of the bride a horse so that they approve of the marriage, and satisfy the loss, which continues to be a “humiliation” for the family. “They behave like wolves. They perpetrate the night kidnappings because the girls' cries are not heard. Girls can do little to resist”, he said. Apparently, according to activists, two thirds of brides who were married were abducted, a practice that not even the Soviet authorities could eradicate during the more than 70 years they in power. In half of these cases of ala kachuu (kidnaps and runs), the women were married against their will, while 20-25 per cent of brides did not meet their future husband before they were married. Akún ensures that in the past year there have been two cases of suicide: “They were two girls of about 20 years and good college students. They were so unhappy, they hanged themselves. According to our data, in the past six years 15 girls have committed suicide." “Article 155 of the penal code punishes forcing a woman to marry with penalties of five to seven years in prison, but nobody is prosecuted.” The legislation is too liberal and amoral. “We want to modify the article to harden the punishment up to 15 years,” he said. Parents ‘assume’ the abduction Poverty is one of the reasons for the attitude of the parents of the kidnapped girls, as once married they do not have to worry more about their maintenance. In the case of the good students, parents cannot pay their daughters' college education , so it is better that they marry as soon as possible, even more so in times of economic crisis. In addition, these weddings are very cheap. They are secret marriages without a banquet, and divorce is also very simple, as it is enough to repeat three times the word “talak” (divorced in Arabic). According to a university study, only a third of women who are abducted are left to live with her kidnapper. The abduction of brides is a tragedy for everyone. "How can they be married off to someone they have never seen?", says Cholpón. Akún also criticises the permissiveness of the Muslim Church of this kind of amoral behaviour. One Muslim leader, Uzbek Chotonov, assured that the abduction of brides is the only way to prevent that women get used to living with their parents. “The girls that are slow to marry must be forced to do so or simply kidnapped”, he proposes. Further Information: