Afghan woman's choice: 12 years in jail or marry her rapist and risk death

[Sasha]

source with movie: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/22/wo...tml?hpt=ias_c1

Afghan woman's choice: 12 years in jail or marry her rapist and risk death

By Nick Paton Walsh and Masoud Popalza, CNN
November 22, 2011 -- Updated 1818 GMT (0218 HKT)




Woman being forced to marry her rapist



STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Afghan rape victim Gulnaz found guilty by courts of adultery and jailed for 12 years
• The only way victim can escape incarceration is to marry her attacker
• Gulnaz refuses to give away the daughter who resulted from the rape
• Women in her situation can be killed for the perceived shame their ordeal has brought their community

Kabul (CNN) -- The ordeal of Gulnaz did not simply begin and end with the physical attack of her rape. The rape began a years-long nightmare of further pain, culminating in an awful choice she must now make.
Even two years later, Gulnaz remembers the smell and state of her rapist's clothes when he came into the house when her mother left for a brief visit to the hospital.
"He had filthy clothes on as he does metal and construction work. When my mother went out, he came into my house and he closed doors and windows. I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth," she said.
The rapist was her cousin's husband.
After the attack, she hid what happened as long as she could. But soon she began vomiting in the mornings and showing signs of pregnancy. It was her attacker's child.
In Afghanistan, this brought her not sympathy, but prosecution. Aged just 19, she was found guilty by the courts of sex outside of marriage -- adultery -- and sentenced to twelve years in jail.
Now inside Kabul's Badam Bagh jail, she and her child are serving her sentence together.
I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth
Gulnaz



Sitting with the baby in her lap, her face carefully covered, she explains the only choice she has that would end her incarceration.
The only way around the dishonor of rape, or adultery in the eyes of Afghans, is to marry her attacker. This will, in the eyes of some, give her child a family and restore her honor.
Incredibly, this is something that Gulnaz is willing to do.
"I was asked if I wanted to start a new life by getting released, by marrying this man", she told CNN in an exclusive interview. "My answer was that one man dishonored me, and I want to stay with that man."
Tending to her daughter in the jail's cold, she added: "My daughter is a little innocent child. Who knew I would have a child in this way. A lot of people told me that after your daughter's born give it to someone else, but my aunt told me to keep her as proof of my innocence."
Gulnaz's choice is stark. Women in her situation are often killed for the shame their ordeal has brought the community. She is at risk, some say, from her attacker's family.
We found Gulnaz's convicted rapist in a jail across town. While he denied raping her, he agreed that she would likely be killed if she gets out of jail. But he insists that it will be her family, not his, that will kill her, "out of shame."
Whether threatened by his family or hers, for now, jail may be the safest place for her.
Shockingly, Gulnaz's case is common in Afghanistan.
CNN asked a spokesman for the prosecutor to comment on the case. The reply was that there were hundreds such cases and the office would need time to look into it.
I was asked if I wanted to start a new life by getting released, by marrying this man
Gulnaz



But Gulnaz's plight has found international attention because of a dispute between the European Union and a team of documentary makers hired to report on women's rights in Afghanistan.
The documentary makers filmed a lengthy report on Gulnaz and other women, showing her talking openly about her fate. They showed the film to the EU, who were paying for it as part of a project on female rights here. After viewing it, the EU decided to spike the project.
The EU said it was concerned about the safety of the women in the film: they could be identified and might face reprisals. The filmmakers however suspect -- citing an email leaked from the EU delegation -- that the EU might also be motivated by its sensitive relationship with Afghan justice institutions, since he film shows the Afghan justice system in a very unflattering light.
The leaked email says: "The delegation also has to consider its relations with [Afghan] Justice institutions in connection with the other work that it is doing in the sector."
The EU Ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, rejected any political motivation in asking for the film not to be shown.
"What I am concerned about is that situation of the women. About the security and well being, that's of paramount importance, the key criteria according to which I, as representative of the European Union will judge," said the ambassdor.
Under Afghan law, Gulnaz has been judged an adulterer. Despite the ongoing dispute over her story, her predicament has not changed. She faces the hideous choice of 12 years in jail or marriage to her rapist and risk death. It's a marriage she says she'll accept, so her child can continue to have a mother.

[Game Girl]

Disgusting! This really makes me sick! I feel so sorry for that poor woman and her child. What a horrible choice she has to make. I wish there was something we could do.

[Smyg]

So much for fighting the taliban threat to the Afghan people.

[khad]

The Western left embraced the mujahideen in the 80s, who were a bunch of child raping fundamentalists even worse in some ways than the Taliban.

I can't help but feel a slight twinge of irony in seeing these articles posted on revleft.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The Western left embraced the mujahideen in the 80s

Really?

[Veovis]

The Western left embraced the mujahideen in the 80s, who were a bunch of child raping fundamentalists even worse in some ways than the Taliban.

I can't help but feel a slight twinge of irony in seeing these articles posted on revleft.

I find that hard to believe. For all the bad associated with the Soviet-backed Afghan régime, at least it managed to bring some semblance of modernity to the country. For instance, it improved the lot of Afghan women.

[khad]

Really?

Absolutely. Apart from the openly pro-Soviet sects, the Sparts were the only other notable group that defended the progressive gains in Afghanistan.

The walk of shame includes people like Paul Foot, a prominent SWPUK member who incited anti-Soviet hysteria in his columns in the Daily Mirror. The Socialist Worker celebrated fundamentalist terrorism against the PDPA and cheered the dissolution of the USSR, echoing the positions of prominent liberals like Chomsky and Zinn.

They were the left wing of capital.

I find that hard to believe. For all the bad associated with the Soviet-backed Afghan régime, at least it managed to bring some semblance of modernity to the country. For instance, it improved the lot of Afghan women.

How naive you are. I try to keep out of sectarian garbage, but everything the Sparts say here is true:
http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/921/wilson.html

Screaming “Troops Out of Afghanistan” was not enough for the ISO’s then-parent group, the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP). SWP leader Paul Foot succeeded in provoking an anti-Soviet frenzy on the floor of Parliament, by right-wing Tories and Labour Party “lefts” alike, through incendiary “exposés” in his Daily Mirror column of the possibility that British meat—“our beef”—exported to the Soviet Union might be sent to Soviet soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

Today, the ISO calls Charlie Wilson’s War “thoroughly reactionary.” There is, for example, the scene where wealthy right-wing socialite Joanne Herring, played by Julia Roberts, tells Wilson, played by Tom Hanks, “I want you to deliver such a crushing defeat to the Soviets that Communism crumbles.” But such was exactly the position of the ISO. When Soviet forces pulled out of Afghanistan in 1988-89, in a futile attempt by the Kremlin Stalinist bureaucracy to appease the imperialists, the ISO gloated: “We welcome the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan. It will give heart to all those inside the USSR and in Eastern Europe who want to break the rule of Stalin’s heirs” (Socialist Worker, May 1988). Three years later, the British SWP exulted: “Communism has collapsed…. It is a fact that should have every socialist rejoicing” (Socialist Worker [Britain], 31 August 1991). The ISO could have scripted the lines for crazed anti-Communist Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser under Democrat Jimmy Carter and today a foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, when he ranted: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Charlie Wilson’s War is a thoroughly reactionary movie. The film peddles anti-Soviet lies discredited long ago, such as that Red Army troops planted toys containing bombs on roadsides in order to maim Afghan children. Nowhere does the film even hint that long before the Red Army intervention, the U.S. was funneling aid to the mullahs who rose up against the Afghan government’s modest reforms for the brutally enslaved women. Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters,” with whom the ISO sided, were exemplified by one Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the largest recipient of American aid, who had a penchant for throwing acid at the faces of unveiled women. Though the mujahedin fought to maintain women in purdah (seclusion), forced them to wear the suffocating head-to-toe burka and deprived them of education and medical care, the film ludicrously shows unveiled women mixing freely with men in refugee camps.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Neale of the ISO’s erstwhile comrades of the British SWP (they split in 2001) has suddenly discovered, doubtless after much research, that “feminism is now very weak in Afghanistan”! The cause? “In the 1980s Afghan feminist women supported the Russians and their violent occupation” (Socialist Worker [Britain], 19 January). The “lesson for today,” Neale lectures, is “if the left allies with the invader, the eventual resistance will hate the left.” In blaming the present condition of Afghan women on the Soviet Union and those women who fought alongside the Red Army, the SWP sounds much like the Southern “redeemers” after the U.S. Civil War who condemned former slaves for joining with the Union Army as it marched through the South.

But this is just history. Many of you know that I haven't attacked the SWPUK once on revleft, because I don't think sectarian history is altogether relevant when dealing with immediate issues.

[Sasha]

They were the left wing of capital.

which would make the pro-soviet "sects"/lefts?

the other left wing of capital? the left wing of other capital? the non left wing of capital?

[khad]

As far as I'm concerned, there's the left and everyone else.

I choose not to get bogged down in sectarian semantics, so boo hoo if my labeling of Chomsky as the "left wing of capital" doesn't accord with your own highly idiosyncratic and theoretically sophisticated definitions.

[Sasha]

oh call chomsky, being essentially a soc dem, by all means the left side of capital, i'm just curious if your willing to be as critical about all the other "left" sides of all other forms of capital(ism).

[Manifesto]

Ok Chomsky is not a Social Democrat!

[kahimikarie]

it's very sad. was reading an article that kind of touched on issues like this: if only it caused shame in communities when men beat/raped women and they shamed the men instead of the victims.

[Arlekino]

Do somebody know how Soviets helped woman and comparing to NATO towards woman issues. As far I hearing from media now only from Charity organisation and nothing else. I think nato don't giving dam about those woman.

[khad]

Do somebody know how Soviets helped woman and comparing to NATO towards woman issues. As far I hearing from media now only from Charity organisation and nothing else. I think nato don't giving dam about those woman.

For you:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=20556

[Zostrianos]

Disgusting. So much for the glorious liberation of Afghanistan by the US. Nothing's changed, and the Afghan government (which is supported by the West) upholds these inhuman bronze age laws.
I think they should set up some kind of program to allow women in countries like this to emigrate to the West. They shouldn't have to live in a society that considers them less than animals

[Zostrianos]

A revolting update: the president freed her on condition that she marries her rapist:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-15991641

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a rape victim who was jailed for adultery, after she apparently agreed to marry her attacker.
A government statement said she agreed to the marriage, although her lawyer said she did not wish to marry him.
The woman, named as Gulnaz, gave birth in prison to a daughter who has been kept in jail with her.
Human rights groups say hundreds of women in Afghan jails are victims of rape or domestic violence.
Gulnaz's lawyer told the BBC she hoped the government would allow Gulnaz the freedom to choose whom to marry.
"In my conversations with Gulnaz she told me that if she had the free choice she would not marry the man who raped her," said Kimberley Motley.
Ms Motley told the BBC that Gulnaz's release was not conditional on her marrying the rapist.
The case has drawn international attention to the plight of many Afghan women 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban.
Earlier this month, Gulnaz said that after she was raped she was charged with adultery.
"At first my sentence was two years," she said. "When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn't do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?"
The most recent appeal saw her sentence reduced to three years.
'Marriage with conditions'
Some 5,000 people signed a petition for Gulnaz's release. News of her pardon came in a statement from the presidential palace.
Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

Her case has served to highlight the plight of Afghan women, who 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime often continue to suffer in unimaginable conditions, deprived of even the most basic human rights”

Vygaudas Usackas EU representative to Afghanistan

• Taliban peace deal 'threat to women's future'

It said a meeting of the judiciary committee had "discussed the issue of rape... and the issue of her imprisonment".
"As the both sides [Gulnaz and the rapist] have agreed to get married to each other with conditions, respective authorities were tasked to take action upon it according to Islamic Shariah [law]," it said.
"The president ordered the office of administrative affairs and the secretariat of the council of ministers to make the decree of Gulnaz's release."
The attack on Gulnaz was brought to light by her pregnancy. Her attacker - her cousin's husband - was jailed for 12 years, later reduced on appeal to seven years.
Her story was included in a European Union documentary on Afghan women jailed for so-called "moral crimes" - however, the EU blocked its release.
The EU said it decided to withdraw the film - which it commissioned and paid for - because of "very real concerns for the safety of the women portrayed".
The EU's Ambassador and Special Representative to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, said on Thursday he was "delighted" to hear Gulnaz was to be freed.
"Her case has served to highlight the plight of Afghan women, who 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime often continue to suffer in unimaginable conditions, deprived of even the most basic human rights," he said.
"While we applaud the release of Gulnaz, on the orders of President Karzai, it is the hope of the European Union that the same mercy that has been extended to Gulnaz is applied to all women in similar circumstances."
Human rights workers criticised the EU for withdrawing the documentary, saying the injustice in the Afghan judicial system should be exposed.
Half of Afghanistan's women prisoners are inmates for "zina" or moral crimes.
The BBC's Bilal Sarwary says recent cases of violence against women are embarrassing for the Afghan government.
Many Afghan women rights activists say there must be an end to the culture of impunity and police must punish all those behind violence against women, he adds.

[Cheung Mo]

The Western left embraced the mujahideen in the 80s, who were a bunch of child raping fundamentalists even worse in some ways than the Taliban.

I can't help but feel a slight twinge of irony in seeing these articles posted on revleft.

Wealthy American liberals != "Western left"

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

As far as I'm concerned, there's the left and everyone else.

I choose not to get bogged down in sectarian semantics, so boo hoo if my labeling of Chomsky as the "left wing of capital" doesn't accord with your own highly idiosyncratic and theoretically sophisticated definitions.

Personally, I feel I wouldn't have backed any side of that conflict. Soviets were too corrupt, the Mujahideen were too anti-women, and the Americans? Do I really have to say?