Sunday, July 31, 2016

Tales of a child bride: 'My father sold me for 12 cows'

So common are the practices of abduction, rape and forced marriage of girls in northern Tanzania that a single word is used to encapsulate them all: kupura. It is a word used by people from the Sukuma tribe to describe the snatching of girls in broad daylight as they walk to school; a three-syllabled euphemism that downplays their long-term physical and sexual abuse.

And yet here in the region of Shinyanga, the practice of kupura is validated by the oft-recited motto of Sukuma men: alcohol, meat and vagina.

"This slogan is in their blood and a way of life," says Revocatus Itendelebanya. "These are the three things they feel entitled to as men."

Itendelebanya, the legal and gender officer for the local NGO, Agape, says this sense of entitlement, in what is a perennially patriarchal society, also explains why passers-by don't intervene when they witness an abduction. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. 65 year old man marries 12 year old girl! (Child marriage social experiment)
  2. Indian child bride, 13, writes letter begging to stop marriage but father...
  3. The sad hidden plight of child grooms...
  4. Iranian child bride faces execution for killing the man she was forced to marry...
  5. 11-year-old Yemeni girl on forced marriages: I'd rather kill myself...
  6. Child marriage sets girls up for a lifetime of abuse...
  7. 4-year-old girl married in India and divorced at 8! WTF!
  8. She's only 10, but she's already been married, raped, beaten and divorced!!
  9. Saudi men buying Syrian refugee children as brides and prostitutes...

No comments:

Post a Comment