The practice of bride kidnapping is where a man kidnaps the woman he wishes to marry, often assisted by other men. While a very old tradition, bride abduction still exists in certain cultures today.
Kyrgyzstan, a mountainous central Eurasian country, is one of few places were bride-abduction is still happening. They call it ala kachuu, “Grab and run”. Over the last year the country has received a spell of media attention for this practise especially in late 2012, early 2013 because of the toughening of laws and sentences on ala kachuu kidnappers and conspirators. In January 2013, President Atambayev passed a new law increasing the sentence for bride-kidnapping from 3 to 7 years. However, despite these measures, this tradition still exists and is prevalent in most villages and towns due to the overwhelming community stigma in rural areas and the authorities turning a blind eye.
The victim of ala kachuu can be chosen at random, but in most cases the victim is someone the abductor knows in advance and usually a person who has rejected the advances of the husband to-be. In some situations, kidnapping is only conducted for appearances to uphold the tradition and the bride’s family and groom’s family would have discussed the wedding even if the groom had asked the bride for her hand and the bride’s family and groom’s family would have discussed it.
The men of the groom’s family will plan the kidnapping, follow their target bride to-be and wait for a opportune moment to grab her and physically haul her into the getaway vehicle to take her back to the groom’s house. Once they arrive at the house, the victim is then convinced, cowed, and coerced into wearing a white headscarf (the symbol of a married woman) by the older women of the groom’s family.
The women convince her that she will shame herself and her family if she refuses their offer and returns back to her home, convince her she will be a spinster the rest of her life, that the community will outcast her, that they themselves had to go through the same thing, and with persistent effort try to make her wear the white headscarf. This cowing will go on for hours, even days, but the more the bride resists and struggles against the efforts of the women of the house, the more appealing the candidate bride is. Resistance is, in their eyes, a mark of her innocence. There are several very disturbing videos of this occurrence on YouTube, the victim puffy eyed from crying and screaming in refusal, the women of the family gathered around her doggedly convincing her.
If the victim’s family are aware of the abduction, sometimes a brother or a father will come to retrieve the girl and save her from a forced marriage, obviously with a lot of resistance from the groom and his family. But because of the immense pressure from the community, it is common for the girl to eventually get married to her kidnapper anyway. Other victims are not so lucky and are forced into marriages, raped and often commit suicide because of the emotional distress they suffer as a result of the prolonged abduction and marriage to a complete stranger. In some abductions too, the victim’s family come to convince the girl to marry as if she has already entered the would-be groom’s house and so is “impure” and so will bring dishonour to their family if she doesn’t get married.
Restless Beings are one of a few charities that have launched a campaign to raise awareness of the perverse tradition. In an aim to eliminate the threat to young women of being kidnapped for marraige, they conducted interviews with the families of two ala kachuu victims. Viniera and Nuzrat, who both were kidnapped at 21, ended their own lives because of the experience they suffered. The interview Restless Beings conducted shows the effects of the kidnapping on the families and on society as a whole.
As well as a way to publically humiliate and shame women (even when concensual), Ala kachuu is a complete violation of women’s basic human rights. It is also a self-fulfilling custom that is passed on from generation to generation in the name of keeping to “the Kyrgyz way” and so is the expected way of doing things. No-one really knows where this tradition comes from. According to Islam, the national religion of Kyrgyzstan, marriage in violent circumstances and without agreement is not allowed. Many people disagree with the tradition. Yet it is estimated that up to 2 in 5 marriages are a result of abduction and that two-thirds of those are non-consensual.
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