Kyrgyzstan’s kidnapped brides use fashion and flags to end marriage taboo
BISHKEK: Walking proudly down a catwalk, the lights and glamour seemed like a lifetime away from Elzat Kazakbaeva’s nightmare ordeal five years ago when she was grabbed off a Kyrgyzstan street by a group of men wanting to marry her to an uninvited suitor.
Kazakbaeva is one of thousands of woman abducted and forced to marry each year in the former Soviet republic in Central Asia where bride kidnappings continue, particularly in rural areas.
Bride kidnapping - which also occurs in nations like Armenia, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan - was outlawed in 2013 in Kyrgyzstan where authorities recognised it could lead to marital rape, domestic violence, and psychological trauma.
But some communities still see it as a pre-Soviet tradition dating back to tribal prestige, said Russell Kleinbach, professor emeritus of sociology at Philadelphia University and co-founder of women’s advocacy group Kyz Korgon Institute.
Now a new generation of women are eschewing acceptance of this abuse, with their campaign escalating in 2018 when one kidnapped bride, Burulai Turdaaly Kyzy, 20, was put in the same police cell as the man who abducted her - and stabbed to death.
Her killer was jailed for 20 years but her murder sparked national outrage and protests against bride kidnappings in a country where campaigners said tougher sentences were handed down for kidnapping livestock than women until recently.
Fashion designer Zamira Moldosheva has organised a campaign as part of a rising public movement against bride kidnapping which has ranged from charity bike rides to flag installations with campaigners saying more events would be planned this year.
She organised a fashion show featuring only women who had been abused or kidnapped, dressed as historical Kyrgyz women.
“Can’t we women do something against the violence taking place in our country?” Moldosheva said in an interview in Bishkek, the capital of the majority Muslim nation of six million people.
“Bride kidnapping is not our tradition - it should be stopped,” she said, adding that bride kidnapping was a form of forced marriage and not a traditional practice. Myth not tradition
Kazakbaeva, one of 12 models in the fashion show, said she was glad to participate in the event last October to highlight her ordeal and encourage other women to flee forced marriages.
Kazakbaeva, then a student aged 19, was ambushed in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon outside her college dormitory in Bishkek and forced into a waiting car by a group of men.
“I felt as if I was an animal,” Kazakbaeva told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, her faced streaked with tears. “I couldn’t move or do anything at all.”
Kazakbaeva was taken to the groom’s home in rural Issyk Kul region, about 200 km (125 miles) east of Bishkek, where she was dressed in white and taken into a decorated room for an impending ceremony.
She spent hours pleading with the groom’s family - and her own - to stop the forced marriage.
“My grandmother is very