Team DailyPedia
Kazakhstan – A video of a group of people dragging a woman into the house of her future husband has been circulating online.
The terrified woman was pulled out of a car and brought inside a house where the groom and his relatives are waiting.
Aside from the curious neighbors, no one in the family noticed her screaming, as they were very happy celebrating-throwing petals, confetti, and recording the whole ‘forced’ marriage.
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This kidnapping and forced marriage has been an ancient practice in several countries in Africa, Central Asia, and South America. The poor brides-to-be cry and beg the kidnappers, mostly friends of the future husband, to let them go. These women are forced to agree to the marriage and celebrate with the new family.
According to Anfisa Zuyeva, a local woman’s rights activist, this practice is ‘evil’ and ‘barbaric’.
In an interview, she said, this custom “forces young girls into loveless marriages with men they hardly know. Often the families of the victims agree because the groom pays them a lot of money. But it is an outdated and horrific tradition which has no place in modern Kazakhstan.”
This issue of bride kidnapping has been documented in 2012 featuring interviews with Kyrgyzstan residents who still practice forced marriage.
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“In rural Kyrgyzstan men still marry their women the old-fashioned way: by abducting them off the street and forcing them to be their wife,” Vice said. “Bride kidnapping is a supposedly ancient custom that’s made a major comeback since the fall of Communism and now accounts for nearly half of all marriages in some parts.”
Why would men to this?
According to Gazbubu Babayarova, founder of Kyz Korgon Institute, an NGO in Kyrgyzstan which focuses on preventing non-consensual marriage and providing assistance to kidnapped wives, “Once bride-kidnapping was characteristic mostly to rural areas, but it has become widespread everywhere, including the capital, Bishkek.”
He also added,
Sometimes, boys are afraid of asking the girls’ permission. They think it’s easier just to kidnap her, because they are afraid maybe she will refuse. Another reason is that even if there is a law, it’s not being implemented. Since the kidnappers go unpunished, bride-kidnapping is happening again and again.
