Da SAWA Australia
Estratto da The New York Times
Teenage girls flogged for running away from forced marriage
Disguised in boys’ clothes, two girls aged 13 and 14 had been fleeing for two days along rutted roads and over mountain passes into Herat Province to escape their illegal, forced marriages to much older men. A police officer spotted them as girls, ignored their pleas and sent them back to their remote village in Ghor Province. There they were publicly and viciously flogged for daring to run away from their husbands.
Their tormentors, who videotaped the abuse, were not the Taliban, but local mullahs and the former warlord, now a pro-government figure who largely rules the district where the girls live. Sympathizers of the victims smuggled out two video recordings of the floggings to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which released them on Saturday after unsuccessfully lobbying for government action.
According to a Unicef study, from 2000 to 2008, the brides in 43 percent of Afghan marriages were under 18. Although the Afghan Constitution forbids the marriage of girls under the age of 16, tribal customs often condone marriage once puberty is reached, or even earlier. Flogging is also illegal.
Forced into a so-called marriage exchange, where each girl was given to an elderly man in the other’s family, the girls later complained that their husbands beat them when they tried to resist consummating the unions. Dressed as boys, they escaped.
Although Herat has shelters for battered and runaway women and girls, the police instead contacted the former warlord, Fazil Ahad Khan, whom Human Rights Commission workers describe as the self-appointed commander and morals enforcer in his district in Ghor Province, and returned the girls to his custody. The girls were sentenced to 40 lashes each and flogged on Jan. 12.
In the video, the mullah, under Mr. Khan’s approving eye, administers the punishment with a leather strap, which he appears to wield with as much force as possible, striking each girl in turn on her legs and buttocks with a loud crack each time. Their heavy red winter chadors are pulled over their heads so only their skirts protect them from the blows.