Kidnapped brides use fashion and flags to end abuse
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.
She is one of thousands of women 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 see it as a pre-Soviet tradition dating from tribal prestige, said Russell Kleinbach, a professor emeritus of sociology at Philadelphia University and the co-founder of women’s advocacy group Kyz Korgon Institute.
Now a new generation of women are eschewing acceptance of the abuse, with their campaign escalating last year when a 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 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 is part of a rising public movement against bride kidnapping which has ranged from charity bike rides to flag installations. 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?” Moldosheva said 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 bride kidnapping was a form of forced marriage and not a traditional practice.
Kazakbaeva, one of 12 models in the fashion show, said she was glad to take part in the event in 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 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,” she said. “I couldn’t move or do anything.”
She was taken to the groom’s home 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 traditional, she thought it would be a shame and she started convincing me to stay,” said Kazakbaeva.
When her mother threatened to call the police, the groom’s family let her go. She was lucky to escape unwed, she said, and hoped the fashion show, depicting historical female figures, would help to bring the taboo subject to the fore.
“Women nowadays can also be the characters of new fairy tales for others,” said Kazakbaeva. “I’m fighting for women’s rights.”
Kyrgyzstan toughened laws against bride kidnapping in 2013, making it punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP.
A UNDP spokesperson said data was scant on the number of women abducted each year as many women did not report the crime through fear but they estimate about 14% of women aged under 24 are married through some form of coercion.
Umutai Dauletova, the gender co-ordinator at the UNDP in Kyrgyzstan said most cases did not make it to court as women retracted their statements, often under pressure from female family members, fearing public shaming for disobedience or no longer being a virgin.
“This is the phenomenon of women suppressing other women,” she said. | Reuters African News Agency (ANA)