I Now Pronounce You Horrifically Beaten, Abused and Disfigured

YouTube: Uploaded by YouCruising on Dec 31, 2011

A video given to the BBC shows the extent of the injuries suffered by a 15 year-old Afghan child bride who was locked up and tortured by her husband.

The girl was left starving after being detained by him and his family for several months.

The case came to light this week when police rescued the teenager, Sahar Gul, who had been locked up in the basement of her in-laws' house.

Police say that she had had her nails and clumps of hair pulled out.

In addition they say she had chunks of flesh cut out with pliers.

Sahar Gul was married off to a 30-year-old man around seven months ago, when she was just 14 years old. Her parents contacted police after not being able to see her for several months.

She was rescued from a dark, windowless room in her in-laws' house, according to Baghlan police official Jawid Basharat.

In the video, as Sahar is taken to hospital in a wheelchair, she is asked who beat her. She names her father-in-law, her husband, her sister-in-law, her brother-in-law and her mother-in-law. The 15-year-old says her hair and her nails were pulled out by her mother-in-law.

The authorities in the northern Baghlan province said they were aware of reports that the girl was tortured after she refused to be forced into prostitution, but could not confirm that was the case.

Rahima Zarifi, director of the Women's Affairs Department in Baghlan, said Sahar had been severely tortured, both physically and mentally, and that the psychological scars were likely to endure.

The police have managed to arrest Sahar's in-laws, but her husband had already fled.

Women in many parts of Afghanistan continue to suffer domestic abuse, often at the hands of their own family or in-laws.

Human rights activists worry that the plight of many women here, especially in rural areas, is being sidelined as the international community focuses on its military drawdown, and puts less emphasis and less pressure on the Afghan authorities over human rights.

In the second quarter of this year alone, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission registered 1,026 cases of violence against women, compared with a total last year of 2,700.

Those are only the cases that come to light.

Under Afghan law, the earliest age for marriage for girls is 16. However, almost half of Afghan women are married when they are younger.

Child Marriage Rate in Turkey ... 14%

Report finds Turkey’s early marriage rate at 14 percent.

Today's Zalman

The percentage of child marriages in Turkey, where one of the spouses is underage, is 14 percent, a study by the International Strategic Research Agency (USAK) has found.

Turkey has the second highest rate of early marriages among the European countries in the USAK survey, following Georgia where the percentage is 17

percent.

USAK’s report found that the highest number of child marriages can be found in Western, Eastern and Central African countries followed by South Asian counties.

The agency held a press conference on Friday to announce the details of its report “Marriage or Playing House? Early and Forced Marriages: Child Brides,” which includes the results of a study conducted by the agency.

USAK researcher Elvan Aydemir presented the results to the media. The report also includes statements and observations from experts as well as interviews with some of the surveyed.

The report found that an estimated 10 to 12 million girls are forced into marriage at an early age every year in the developing world. In Turkey, one out of every three women is married as a child bride.

USAK’s findings indicate that early marriages cannot just be explained by cultural factors or traditions and beliefs, saying that the practice is caused by a large number of factors that include socio-cultural factors, education, gender equality in society as well as wars or natural disasters.

The report says that early marriages have devastating results, both at an individual and social level. A few among these consequences are mother-child deaths, problems relating to fertility health, lack of education, violence against and exploitation of women as well as the social isolation of women, the report said.

Also See ... Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time 

According to "Today's Zaman," an English-language edition of what has traditionally been one of Turkey's most conservative newspapers (I generally don't agree with their opinion page- to put it midly), a 12-year-old Syrian bride who was married to a 35-year-old Turkish man in the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa (known for its famous dish, Urfa kebab-pictured here) has returned home to her parents.

Bedia Amori, the child bride (she is not the one actually pictured here), has claimed that her spouse Abdullah Tapan, had abused her during their very short marriage, which was never recognized by the state though it had been sanctioned by a local mosque (Turkey's state laws, in many instances, are quite ironically more progressive/secular than 'tribal laws' in rural regions).

According to "Today's Zaman," Tapan had a criminal record in the Urfa district and the groom's family had paid their future in-laws a considerable amount of money (approximately $30,000) for Amori's hand in marriage.

Amori's father ended up traveling to Urfa, which is very close to the Syrian border, and asked to get his daughter back. Local authorities soom arrested Tapan, and Amori was set free to return to Syria.

The child bride told police that Tapan drank too much alcohol and forced her to watch pornographic films.

Amori's family had assumed they were giving their daughter to a good Muslim man.

I should point out that anti-Muslim sites like jihadwatch.org love these sorts of stories, but I disagree with their political agenda as I see both extreme evangelical Christians and radical fundamentalist Muslims to be an equal political threat to secularism universally. And, though I don't practice Islam, my late father's religion, myself I do not in any way view it as a religion of evil.

Nevertheless, I am concerned that the social aims of Islamic conservatives in Turkey and elsewhere has reached its proverbial tipping point, but there are signs, at least in Turkey, that opposition movements will soon regain traction politically.

Child Bride Shame Prompts Call For Inquiry

Adelaide Now

HUNDREDS of 17-year-old girls have been brought to Australia to get married under a government visa program.

Figures show more than 200 17-year-old girls have been granted Prospective Spouse visas over the past five years. Child safety campaigners branded the figures shocking and demanded an immediate inquiry.

Most are young women from the Middle East who are sometimes involved in arranged marriages. Hundreds more 18-, 19- and 20-year-old women have also received the visas after being sponsored by older men. Most of the teenagers are from the Middle East or South-East Asian countries.

One 17-year-old from Thailand was brought out by a 57-year-old man. Another 17-year-old Iraqi girl was sponsored by a 50-year-old.

More than 100 17-year-olds from Lebanon alone have been granted the visas after being sponsored by men aged from 19 to 37.

Visa conditions say girls must marry sponsors within nine months. Australian laws only allow minors to be married under strict conditions with court approval.

In another case, a Year 10 Lebanese girl from an area dominated by fanatic fundamentalist Muslim groups sought protection after she arrived in Australia on a Prospective Spouse visa for an arranged marriage with a man decades her senior, only to find he was a violent drunk who kept his previous wife and children next door.

The girl was granted a protection visa after she called her own family who threatened to kill her.

"I will kill you at the airport and I will bury you in the grave," the girl's family said in a letter.

The Australian Childhood Foundation's Joe Tucci described the figures as shocking and called for an urgent inquiry. "A thorough audit needs to be done to ensure these children are safe," he said. Child safety researcher Dr Chris Goddard said the figures were very disturbing and called for an inquiry.

An Immigration Department spokesman defended the program. "Applicants ... must meet a range of criteria ... including being able to demonstrate they are in a genuine and ongoing partner relationship with their sponsoring partner," he said.