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Afghan girl, given as bride at 9, fights for divorce
Dusk crosses into night, and still Pekay isn't free. After a long day of walking from office to office, pleading with stubborn judges, her quest has failed: She's still married to her abusive husband. Once again, her memories take control. Her father's selling her in marriage to a man five times her age to pay the rent; the beatings and sodomy that followed. She was 9 years old.Her mind drifts toward suicide. She's tried twice - first with a knife, then with kerosene and a match. Pekay is 13 now, one of thousands of girls and women who are trapped in forced marriages, caught between the rural, tribal and Islamic customs that ruled the country for centuries and the promise of a new Afghanistan ruled by laws that apply equally to everyone. Domestic violence is widespread, but most cases never go to court. The laws are weak, and women stay silent out of fear or shame: Divorce disgraces the family and the tribe. Each year, scores of Afghan women escape bad marriages by setting themselves on fire or other forms of suicide. The Muslim fundamentalist Taliban regime collapsed three years ago. Hamid Karzai has won the country's first presidential elections. Women, who couldn't leave their homes freely in the old Afghanistan, voted in droves. Yet none of this momentous change has helped Pekay. Under Afghanistan's civil law, it's illegal for girls younger than 16 to marry. But the Supreme Court, led by conservative clerics and Islamic law, ruled that she can't get divorced, even from a violent child molester. Her last hope is that Fazal Hadi Shinwari, the ultra-conservative chief justice of the Supreme Court, will reverse the decision... Posted by: Anonymoose 2004-11-17 |
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