The NeMolchiKZ Foundation ("Not Silent" in Russian) published on Telegram a video apparently of a young woman beaten at the behest of a watching man. Almaty police say they are investigating the incident.
Telegram: Contact @dina_tansari
"This is how young girls from villages are involved in sex slavery," the Foundation narrates. "First, they are beaten, intimidated, then raped, filmed, and threatened with shame. For fear of being disgraced and beaten and humiliated again, girls do everything required of them."
Sex slavery is not unique to Almaty. In Kyrgyzstan, forced marriages account for nearly a fourth of all marriages, according to careful surveys. In the most forced form of marriage, a man carries away a girl to his family home for sex, rendering her unfit for any other family to accept. Bride kidnappings harm the bride’s health, find Becker, Mirkasimov, and Steiner. And babies born in such marriages are unusually likely to weigh too little, they find. This may be due partly to the stress and poor diet inflicted upon the mother, which hamper the breast-feeding that is traditional in rural Kyrgyzstan. Bride-kidnapping also makes it hard for the woman to find a job, so she is poor, concluded Arabsheibani, Kudebayeva, and Mussurov.
Few published studies of bride kidnappings draw upon the Life in Kyrgyzstan surveys of households, which though careful are too recent to permit firm conclusions about how bride kidnappings affect generations. One can reasonably speculate that the children born in these forced marriages will perpetuate them as adults. Breaking the cycle may require government protection of the young woman victimized. That could include education, training, and temporary income to support her chosen life.
-- Annabel Benson and Leon Taylor, Baltimore, tayloralmaty@gmail.com
References
G. Arabsheibani, A. Kudebayeva, & A. Mussurov.
(2021). A note on bride kidnapping and labor supply behaviour of Kyrgyz women. Economic
Systems, 45(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecosys.2021.100885
C. Becker, B. Mirkasimov, & S. Steiner, S. (2017).
Forced marriage and birth outcomes. Demography, 54(4), 1401-1423.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-017-0591-1
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