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HUSHERI, Tajikistan — When Ruzigul Mahmadsaid disappeared from her village in Tajikistan amid a battle together with her in-laws in October, her mother and father feared the worst.
There was a rising pattern of suicides amongst younger brides lately within the Central Asian nation, the place the abuse of daughters-in-law is frequent. In probably the most excessive instances, girls have certain themselves to their kids and jumped into speeding rivers.
The 22-year-old Mahmadsaid escaped that tragic finish. She reappeared in November after fleeing to a girls’s shelter within the capital, Dushanbe, and now lives together with her mother and father.
However her disappearance for greater than a month from her in-laws’ dwelling has put the highlight on the plight of younger Tajik brides, lots of whom undergo verbal and bodily abuse from their in-laws.
“When a younger lady strikes in together with her in-laws, she is the brand new physique in the home, the one which all the things will get taken out on,” Alla Kuvatova, a sociologist on the Russian-Tajik Slavonic College in Dushanbe, instructed RFE/RL. And when tragedy strikes, “investigators are likely to facet with the woman’s parents-in-law, as a result of they’re older, and since society itself thinks that the woman can be in charge.”
Consultants say a dire economic system has compounded the often-suffocating relations between in-laws and brides, upon whom a lot of the house responsibilities inevitably falls.
A joint examine revealed in 2016 by the Ladies’s Committee, a neighborhood analysis group, and the British charity Oxfam discovered that 97 % of males and 72 % of girls in Tajikistan believed {that a} lady should tolerate home violence with the intention to maintain her household collectively.
Knife Wounds Deemed A ‘Suicide’
A spate of court docket verdicts lately had appeared to sign that in-laws not loved full impunity in how they deal with their daughters-in-law, though younger girls proceed to have little safety.
Since 2018, a number of mothers-in-law — and in a minimum of one case, a father-in-law — have been sentenced to jail for driving younger girls to suicide, a criminal offense that carries a most punishment of eight years in jail.
The newest and outstanding instance was Bibikalon Nazirova, the mother-in-law of 25-year-old Manora Abdufattoh, who died at dwelling in June.
Nazirova was initially sentenced to seven years in jail for driving her daughter-in-law to suicide. However her time period was shortened to 5 years final month, a choice that has enraged rights campaigners and Abdufattoh’s household, who imagine that she was murdered, citing the 26 knife wounds to her abdomen and neck.
“A choose of the Supreme Courtroom contemplating the attraction mentioned that [he had taken] the convict’s intercourse into consideration,” Abdufattoh’s father, Abdufattoh Misokov, vented after the decision. “What sort of justice is that this? Is my daughter, who misplaced her life due to [Nazirova], not a lady as nicely?”
A Fortunate Escape However An Unsure Future
When Mahmadsaid disappeared from her village, about 30 kilometers from Dushanbe, her mom suspected her in-laws. “I might ask her: ‘Are you residing nicely? How is your mother-in-law?’ She instructed me that they had been all the time telling her, ‘We do not care, simply take care of it,'” Bulbul Musafirova instructed RFE/RL’s Tajik Service final month earlier than her daughter reappeared.
Mahmadsaid’s father, Muhamadsaid Avazov, instructed RFE/RL that the 2 households had lengthy been at odds. He mentioned that the bullying of his daughter started when he did not construct a crib for Mahmadsaid’s first little one.
Baraktulla Ashurov, Mahmadsaid’s now-estranged husband, mentioned his spouse instructed his household that she was visiting a health care provider for a check-up on the day she disappeared. The day earlier than, he claimed that that they had gone to the bazaar collectively to purchase garments.
Mahmadsaid solely determined to depart the ladies’s shelter in Dushanbe to assuage her mother and father’ fears for her security, after seeing their interviews with RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, in response to her father. Mahmadsaid has not but filed for divorce, Avazov mentioned, though he added that she had no intention of going again to her husband.
Whereas divorces are on the rise in Tajikistan — official statistics displaying greater than 7,000 divorces within the first half of this yr level to a 12 % rise towards final yr’s figures — the stigma surrounding divorce, and particularly divorced girls returning to their household houses, has not modified.
Tajik Justice Minister Muzaffar Ashuriyon appeared in charge the youthful era for the spike, saying younger folks “must be taught extra about their rights and tasks within the household.”
However Gulrukhsor, a company that runs shelters for girls in Tajikistan, says that round half the ladies who search the group’s assist have suffered abuse by their in-laws.
Mahmadsaid faces an unsure future. She is separated from her two sons, who’re residing together with her husband’s household. “She is probably the most valuable treasure on this planet, and I’ll all the time settle for her, no matter her sins,” her father instructed RFE/RL’s Tajik Service.
“In addition to, my grandchildren want their mom,” Avazov mentioned. “They love her very a lot.”
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