Child Brides Flogged

The NY Times this week released a stunning article on the life of young women in Afghanistan, who are flogged when they try to run away from being a child bride for local men there.

The piece painted a picture of a country where far too many young women are forced into being child brides, and flogged for not going along with it even though flogging is illegal.

Said one investigator: "I was shocked when I watched the video, I thought in the 21st century such a criminal incident could not happen in our country. It's inhuman, anti-Islam and illegal."

Child Brides Flogged
nytimes

The two Afghan girls had every reason to expect the law would be on their side when a policeman at a checkpoint stopped the bus they were in. Disguised in boys' clothes, the girls, ages 13 and 14, had been fleeing for two days along rutted roads and over mountain passes to escape their illegal, forced marriages to much older men, and now they had made it to relatively liberal Herat Province...The ordeal of Afghanistan's child brides illustrates an uncomfortable truth. What in most countries would be considered a criminal offense is in many parts of Afghanistan a cultural norm, one which the government has been either unable or unwilling to challenge effectively.

Child Brides Flogged