Afghan Women Burning Themselves Alive

[Gatekeeper]

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Blood dripped down the 16-year-old girl's face after another beating by her drug addict husband. Worn down by life's pain, she ran to the kitchen, doused herself with gas from a lamp and struck a match.

Desperate to escape domestic violence, forced marriage and hardship, scores of women across Afghanistan each year are committing suicide by fire. While some gains have been made since the fall of the Taliban five years ago, life remains bleak for many Afghan women in the conservative and violence-plagued country, and suicide is a common escape.

Young Gulsum survived to tell her story. Her pretty face and delicate feet were untouched by the flames, but beneath her red turtleneck sweater, floral skirt and white shawl, her skin is puffy and scarred.

More than a month after her attempt, her gnarled hands still bleed.

"It was my decision to die. I didn't want to be like this, with my hands and body like this," she said, sitting on a hospital bed in Kabul and hiding her deformed hands beneath her shawl.

Reliable statistics on self-immolation nationwide are difficult to gauge. In Herat province, where the practice has been most reported and publicized, there were 93 cases last year and 54 so far this year. More than 70 percent of these women die.

"It's all over the country. ... The trend is upward," said Ancil Adrian-Paul of Medica Mondiale, a nonprofit that supports women and girls in crisis zones.

The group has seen girls as young as 9 and women as old as 40 set themselves on fire. But many incidents remain hidden, Adrian-Paul said.

"A lot of self-immolation and suicide cases are not reported to police for religious reasons, for reasons of honor, shame, stigma. There is this collusion of silence," Adrian-Paul said on the sidelines of a conference this week in Kabul on self-immolation.

Five years after the fall of the repressive Taliban regime, domestic violence affects "an overwhelming majority" of Afghan women and girls, according to a recent report from Womankind, an international women's rights groups.

An estimated 60 to 80 percent of Afghan marriages are forced, the report said. More than half of Afghan women are married before they turn 16 and many young girls are married to men who are several decades older, the report said. The exchange of women and girls to resolve a crime, debt or household dispute is also common.

Under the hard-line Taliban regime, women were unable to vote, receive education or be employed. In recent years, women have gained the right to cast ballots and female candidates have run for parliament, but women are often still regarded as second-class citizens.

For Gulsum, who goes by one name, the marriage proposal came with a simple cultural gesture her father could not refuse: The groom's sister-in-law lay her newborn son at the father's feet — an act signifying purity and innocence — and asked for the girl's hand.

"My father said, 'The baby is like a holy book, so I can't say no,'" the teenager recalled of her abrupt betrothal last year to a white-haired, 40-year-old man. "In the tradition of our country, when our fathers give us away to be married, we have no choice but to accept."

She and her husband lived for six months at her parents' home in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The newlyweds then moved in with his family in neighboring Iran, which is home to many Afghan refugees.

Once out of her parents' care, her husband turned to heroin and alcohol, and the beatings began, Gulsum said. The beatings became worse when she confronted her husband about his addictions. The last time he hit her was earlier this fall when she set herself on fire.

Her husband and his family did not help the burning girl. Their neighbor wrapped her in a blanket to put out the fire and took her to the hospital.

Herat public health director Raoufa Niazi has seen about 150 self-immolation cases over the past two years and pleads with women who survive that fire is not the way to escape their problems. "I tell them to go to complain to the government, but the government doesn't help them," Niazi said. "The government doesn't punish the people who hurt these women. Instead, they just say, 'Why has she done this to herself?'"

Gulsum has since been transferred to a hospital in Kabul, where she has undergone surgery to release the contracted muscles of her neck, and must undergo three or four more procedures to repair other muscles.

She is happier lately and wants to wear pretty clothes again, but has no plans for her future yet. "Let me get better first. When I'm better, then I'll decide what to do," she said. "For now, who would want to marry me?"

This story infuriates me. Frankly, there are days I think the female half of humanity should rise up against abusive and controlling males and put them in their place. Why they don't is beyond me because, God knows, if anyone can lay claim to truly righteous anger in this world, it's a lot of the women of this world.

Gatekeeper

[Chemical Ollie]

It's Bush's fault. Literally.

[SlowwHand]

Time of the month is enough to show them some respect. I mean, damn. A quarter of their life for a long time spent uncomfortably, just off that.

I wonder why by fire? I would hang myself.



EDIT: And Ollie, you are such a flake. What isn't his fault, to you?

[Whoha]

Why they don't is beyond me because,

they'll be honor killed if they do and most of them don't commit suicide/want to die.

[Elok]

Oh, no doubt many of them want to die, but I imagine they have a cultural tradition where suicide wives get gang-raped by demons for eternity or some crap. What a wretched country.

[Impaler[WrG]]

They need to be setting their Husbands on fire as well
The family that burns together, stays together

[KrazyHorse]

Who the **** lights herself on fire simply to commit suicide?

Aren't there enough guns in Afghanistan that she could have simply found one of those and pulled the trigger?

[KrazyHorse]

Frankly, there are days I think the female half of humanity should rise up against abusive and controlling males and put them in their place

How do you suggest they do that? We're bigger, stronger, faster, and better shots.

[Gatekeeper]

Are you saying you're an abusive, controlling male, KH?

[TCO]

bobbet

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Are you saying you're an abusive, controlling male, KH?

No, I'm suggesting that abusive males are probably a representative sample of all males when it comes to those attributes.

[Barnabas]

Women are as free as men let them be, the ugly truth

Men are stronger, and we decide if they women have equal rights, or if we cover them from head to toes and dont let them leave the house

I was watching a documentary 2 weeks ago about europeans who were trying to teach afghan girls different jobs, it all depended on convincing the husbands or fathers of the women, if they disagreed there was nothing the women could do.

[MRT144]

good, less terrorist hatcheries!

[Gatekeeper]

Here's another story that should make males wince. After all, its equivalent would be chopping off the *head* of our most private and sensitive part.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — About 2,000 people demonstrated on Saturday to demand the release of an Ethiopian immigrant sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for mutilating the genitals of his 2-year-old daughter.

Khalid Adem, 30, was convicted on Nov. 1 of aggravated battery and cruelty to children by a court outside Atlanta. It was believed to be the first such criminal case in the U.S.

The protesters marched peacefully around one of the squares in the Ethiopian capital, chanting "Free Khalid." They were watched from a distance by dozens of policemen.

During the trial, prosecutors said Khalid used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in his family's Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The girl's mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.

Khalid's attorney Mark Hill suggested during the trial that the couple's daughter was coached to testify against her father by her mother, who won custody of the child after they divorced in 2003. The girl, now 7, had testified on videotape that her father "cut me on my private part."

"His trial was not fair ... how is it that Fortunate did not notice that her own daughter had been circumcised for almost two years? How is that possible? She only told the police when they got the divorce to hurt him — to get back at him," Adel Adem, Khalid's brother, told The Associated Press before the demonstration.

Federal law specifically bans the practice of genital mutilation, but many states do not have a law addressing it. Georgia lawmakers, with the support of the girl's mother, passed an anti-mutilation law last year. But Adem was not tried under that law since it did not exist when his daughter was cut.

During the trial, Adem testified he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. His attorney acknowledged that the girl had been cut, but implied that the family of the girl's mother, who emigrated from South Africa, may have been responsible.

He said he grew up in Ethiopia's capital and considered the practice more prevalent in rural areas.

Genital mutilation crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say it is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.

Knives, razors or even sharp stones are usually used. The tools are frequently not sterilized, and often, many girls are circumcised at the same ceremony, leading to infection.

It is unknown how many girls have died from the procedure, either during the cutting or from infections, or years later in childbirth. Nightmares, depression, shock and feelings of betrayal are common psychological side effects, according to a 2001 U.S. federal report.

Since 2001, the U.S. State Department estimates that up to 130 million women worldwide have undergone genital mutilation.

[TCO]

Let's not have another circumcision debate.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Who the **** lights herself on fire simply to commit suicide?

Aren't there enough guns in Afghanistan that she could have simply found one of those and pulled the trigger?

Yep,
sounds like a very painful form of suicide.
A lot of painful minutes until your pain receptors of the skin are burned away so that you don´t feel anything anymore.

Shooting or poisoning yourself sounds like a much better way to go.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Aren't there enough guns in Afghanistan that she could have simply found one of those and pulled the trigger?

Hell. If were going to suggest finding a gun, why shoot herself when she could empty the clip into the bastard?

how is it that Fortunate did not notice that her own daughter had been circumcised for almost two years?

This is kind of a good question considering the implement alleged to have been used. I wonder how the prosecution dealt with it.

[Krill]

Personally wouldn't mind forced castration of any male taking part in an arranged marriage, and then giving them to the rapists in a jail for a few decades.

And anyone involved in mutilation of the genitals...now there is a group of people deserving of being burnt alive at the stack...

[Proteus_MST]

The other thing would be to perform a surgical procedure on these males which lets them retain their erectability, but doesn´t let them feel much pleasure during sex,
so that they are able to give pleasure to woman without getting much neurochemical gratification for themselves (i.e. the samething they do by mutilating the genitalia of young women).

As Erection can be archived without sexual aoursal (and you are able to perform sex without feeling anything by applying a local anesthetic onto the tip of your penis) this should theoretically be possible (for example by severing some of the nerves leading from the tip of the penis upwards to the brain )

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Krill

Personally wouldn't mind forced castration of any male taking part in an arranged marriage, and then giving them to the rapists in a jail for a few decades.

Correction. That should be "forced marriage".

Arranged marriage:
Forced marriage:

Originally posted by Krill

And anyone involved in mutilation of the genitals...now there is a group of people deserving of being burnt alive at the stack..

Agreed.

[Dinner]

Remember, if you speak out against this sort of stuff then some people will claim you are racist. FACT!

[Dinner]

The big difference is people should agree to marriage. It would be best if two people decide on their own but if one's family helps to find a spouse for you and both parties are agreeable then that is still ok. If both parties are not agreeable and the marriage is forced then it is not ok.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The big difference is people should agree to marriage. It would be best if two people decide on their own but if one's family helps to find a spouse for you and both parties are agreeable then that is still ok. If both parties are not agreeable and the marriage is forced then it is not ok.

That's what I mean when I say

Arranged marriage: .

Some working people, extremely busy in their work and career, decide that finding a mate is too much hassle, and that they'd be happy with someone from the same socio-economo-cultoro-religious background, and tell their parents to fix them up. That's what arranged marriage means among the educated, at least.

It is interesting that in a Hindu law-book written in the BC years, it is said that if a father does not find his daughter a husband till she is sixteen, she has a right to go out and search out a man for herself. It states that there are eight types of marriage, and two lovers deciding that they want to marry is one of them. In any marriage, the consent of both parties was required. It seems that we have regressed since that time. And that is a real shame - imagine living in a country where the social customs of the BC years were better than the current ones.

This freedom - to find a man for yourself if your father does not find one for you in time, or if you are dissatisfied with what he finds (the father signifying the parents and family) - is unfortunately denied to many women in India today, due to blindly conservative attitudes on the parts of their parents (conservative not as in the political ideology, but as in the literal meaning of the term). Lot of parents decree that the girl must marry the man they choose. Even though the marriages usually work out (the two people are, after all, from almost identical backgrounds), and even though the girl is brought up from the beginning to accept that she will be married off at the appropriate age, due to which the trauma involved is much less, that is still no justification for this sort of crap.

I know a brilliant girl in my college who tells me that she has to fight her family to pursue her further education, and that her family want to marry her off. I am saddened by her tale.

[Gatekeeper]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
The other thing would be to perform a surgical procedure on these males which lets them retain their erectability, but doesn´t let them feel much pleasure during sex,
so that they are able to give pleasure to woman without getting much neurochemical gratification for themselves (i.e. the samething they do by mutilating the genitalia of young women).

As Erection can be archived without sexual aoursal (and you are able to perform sex without feeling anything by applying a local anesthetic onto the tip of your penis) this should theoretically be possible (for example by severing some of the nerves leading from the tip of the penis upwards to the brain )

Ooooohhhh ... now that sounds exquisitely cruel.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Correction. That should be "forced marriage".

Arranged marriage:
Forced marriage:

aneeshm wants an exemption for the 500 million Indian rapists

[LordShiva]

[Q Classic]

So, does this mean we won in Afghanistan, or that if we stay the course in Afghanistan, we'll turn a corner re: women's rights?

[Gatekeeper]

I'm still wondering what happened to the Marshall Plan for Afghanistan. Of course, it's kind of a futile effort until there's enough boots on the ground to actually hold the land. Perhaps the incoming secretary of defense (Robert Gates) will turn some attention back to Afghanistan.

Gatekeeper

[Arrian]

Is there any decent-sized portion of Afgan society that would support our western liberalizing mission (re: women's rights), though? What local allies do we really have in that fight?

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Arrian
Is there any decent-sized portion of Afgan society that would support our western liberalizing mission (re: women's rights), though? What local allies do we really have in that fight?

-Arrian

I suppose it depends on how you define the mission. If its establishing full legal equality, no plural marriage, equal inheritance rights, Id think youd be limited among the men to mainly some commies and ex-commies in Kabul. Maybe a little more broadly among the women. If its about simply sending girls to school, the support would seem to be wider. At least one constiuency elected a woman to parliament.