Thursday, 10 January 2013

Young girls forced to marry

I have been writing the third in the Shuki Series. It is set in a remote region of a country of Arabia. The topic of how many of the Arab nations treat their women has been very much on my mind. Two of my characters are half sisters, Shaiima and Honiara Daoud. Honiara is married at fourteen, but Shaiima refuses to be married, and luckily, her father, the Master Hasquitri Daoud, does not force her.

He could force her. She does not have to consent, she does not have to sign anything, she can simply be given to him, even tied up if necessary. No-one would say her father did not have the right, and no-one would lift a finger to prevent the rape that followed. It is custom and tradition, and not just how I wrote my book of fiction. It is fact in many barbaric countries.

Look at this article. I have copied it exactly as presented.

From the Bigpond home page 2013 Saudi teen married off to 86-year-old Thursday, January 10, 2013 » 09:02am A 15-year-old Saudi girl who was forced to marry an octogenarian has been granted a divorce after a local human rights group intervened, the watchdog says. The Saudi Human Rights Commission (SHRC) raised the case 'after learning of the marriage of a minor girl to an 86-year-old man in Jizan' in southeast Saudi Arabia, the group's head Bandar al-Ayban said in a statement. Al-Hayat daily had reported that the teenager locked herself inside the bedroom on her wedding night before fleeing the man's home and returning to her parents. She had been married off to the man in exchange for a dowry worth around $US17,300 ($A16,550), the daily reported. The SHRC had provided 'legal assistance to the girl' so she could get a divorce, Ayban said. Another SHRC member, Hadi al-Yami, said the girl had 'expressed her rejection of this marriage.' The divorce was announced after a regional tribal chief and local dignitaries intervened. Saudi rights officials have been pushing for a law that would set a minimum marriage age of 16. The SHRC is 'trying in cooperation with ministries of justice and health to prevent such marriages,' Yami told AFP. Rights activist Suhaila al-Hammad says the authorities must 'set the minimum marriage age at 18.' Saudi Arabia has no law against child marriage, and clerics and religious judges justify the practice based on Islamic and Saudi tradition.




With a man of 86, the girl would probably not have been subject to full intercourse. He could, of course, be capable of violating her in other ways. But then there is the factor of him being soon to die. In these countries, widows face severe hardship. If she manages to get work, and is permitted to work, then she may be able to feed herself. If not, and if her relatives do not choose to take in a widow, then it is quite possible that she would starve to death. 'To Love and To Protect' is in progress. Release date April, 2013. This is the third in the Shuki Series. It is a story of love and life, and features the sub-theme of the battle for Women' Rights in a place where religion and tradition give her no more rights than that of a slave. Earlier books on the series are 'Not a Man' and 'The King's Favourite.' https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Samray Also available on other online selling sites such as Barnes and Noble, Kobi and Amazon.

It happens other places as well.

This piece added 26th January, 2013.

Former Child Bride, Held Over a Decade, Escapes Polygamist Sect

By Ken Lee

01/25/2013 at 06:20 PM EST

Ruby Jessop holds one of her six children Tuesday

AP/Ross D. Franklin

A week and a half after she was forced to marry her second cousin at age 14, Ruby Jessop, once a member of the polygamist Mormon sect known as the FLDS, called her older sister Flora in desperation.

"She begged me for help and said she was being abused," Flora Jessop tells PEOPLE. "I told her I would do anything I could to rescue her."

But before Flora could pick her up from the main FLDS compound in Colorado City, Ariz., Ruby was allegedly whisked away by sect members. Thus began a long search for Ruby, who was hidden from her sister and authorities for more than a decade.

That search finally came to an end last month, when Ruby, now 26, was able to flee the compound, temporarily leaving behind her six children, ages 2 to 10.

At a press conference Tuesday held by Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, and attended by Flora, Ruby and her children, Horne announced Ruby's escape and added that deputies assisted her in regaining custody of all her children last week.

(Attempts to reach Ruby's husband, Haven Barlow, were not immediately successful. On the advice of her attorney, Ruby has not commented.)

"Ruby's one of thousands of women held under the regime of [now-imprisoned sect leader] Warren Jeffs and she's thrilled to be free," says Flora, who's since become an anti-polygamy advocate who co-authored the 2009 book "Church of Lies."

Only a handful of former child brides have escaped the church over the years, Flora says.

"They were determined to keep my sister as a baby breeder her whole life," adds Flora. "That's the reality for women in the FLDS community."

The FLDS currently has no known spokesperson.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Young girls forced to wed?


Afghan girl killed over refusal to wed Friday, November 30, 2012 » 05:56am taken direct from the Bigpond Home News page. Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of an Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police say. The girl was carrying water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province on Wednesday when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini told AFP. 'The two men attacked her and slit her throat with a knife,' he said on Thursday. 'They were arrested and are in police custody.' Hussaini said one of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl, but her family had rejected the offer. Extreme violence against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim nation more than a decade after US-led troops brought down the notoriously brutal Taliban Islamist regime. According to figures by British charity organisation Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage. Last month a 20-year-old woman was beheaded by her husband's family in the western province of Herat after she refused to become a prostitute, police said. Four people were arrested over the brutal killing. And in September, five people were arrested over the public flogging of a 16-year-old girl for allegedly having an affair. The girl was whipped 100 times in front of village elders and family members in central Ghazni province. Her alleged boyfriend was fined. Unmarried girls are often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men outside the immediate family. * But it is not only conservative Muslim cultures where girls and women are effectively slaves to the men in their family. There are certain Christian cults where the Master, Divine Leader - whatever they call him -have claimed access to the girls as a right. Even in the sort of Christian derivative sects whose representatives come knocking at your door - they invariably preach that women are very much second class citizens. In past centuries, European cultures were just as bad as the Taliban would have it now - young girls married off without the option, girls kept in strict seclusion, women unable to earn a living and deprived of an education, men exhorted to keep control of their wives to the point where beatings are condoned, even 'honour killings.' But mainly, western cultures are far more enlightened in the treatment of women. Women may complain of being ignored in conversation, or being passed over for a job, but they are far from slaves. I am now working on the third in my Shuki series. Shuki lives in a culture where girls are given away as brides, often without any consultation, where they are regarded as marriageable from the age of thirteen, and where, if they're not found to be 'pure' on the wedding night, they are lucky if they escape with only a beating. I have not preached directly against these customs in my books - they are just a part of the culture. It seems to me that if anyone reads and does not recognise the cruelty and injustice behind these customs, they must be ignorant indeed.