Seek Refuge

Afghan woman, whose genitalia was severed by her husband, fights for justice amid rising violence against women

 

Sadia quietly entered the room, lifted her burqa and took a seat. She's thin, almost emaciated, and old beyond her years.

"It was the second night of Ramadan," Sadia recounted, and she woke her husband up for suhoor, the morning meal served just before dawn.

"I prepared food and I told him to get up. When he got up he asked me why I didn't make milk tea. I told him I would go make it, but he didn't listen. He just started beating me."

Beatings were frequent over the course of their two-year marriage. Two months in, her husband and his family stopped feeding and giving Sadia clothes. They would shut all the windows and doors of the house and take turns beating and strangling her.

"When they beat me, they would tell me, 'You're all alone, scream as loud as you want, there is no one here to hear you.'"

"I asked from God to die."

Three-time abuse rule

Sadia returned to her family home three times because she was beaten so badly. At the husband's family's request, she was sent back, with a promise that the abuse would end.

Afghanistan's traditional justice system, one deeply woven into society, seemingly functions on a three-times rule. If, after the third time, a woman is still being abused by her husband, then elders, who often preside over the cases, will typically allow for a divorce.

Some families, however, intervene immediately so there is no second time. Others, not at all.

Mohammad Islam, Sadia's father, a poor daily labourer, admitted to seeing his daughter being beaten by her husband - not once, but several times. However, Sadia's husband, part of an armed group, sometimes known as arbakai, is led by a well-known, powerful local commander named Noor Mohammad.

Local armed groups have flourished in order to counter the threat from the Taliban as the central government's control barely runs beyond the capital, Kabul.

Afghan first lady in shadow of 1920s queen?

The growing fragility of the north can be seen on the vital highway linking the provincial capital of Takhar, where armed gunmen dot the road passing through the picturesque hills.

"The commander and his men put pressure on Sadia's family, who then come here and tried to pressure us to send her back. They have gone to the hospital and told the doctors to say this incident never happened," said Razmara.

"They also told the prosecutor to not touch the case. They have tried every means possible to get Sadia back."

As the director spoke, Sadia, probably 19 or 20 as she doesn't know her exact date of birth, leaned into the conversation, her hands clasped in her lap, looking down, continuously shaking her head in agreement.

Before passing out on that second night of Ramadan from the beating, Sadia recalls her husband getting on top of her, sitting on her face and then withdrawing his knife.

"I don't know how much time passed, but when I woke up he started beating me again. His brother's son came to the window and asked what was going on. I got up and walked to the window, my husband followed and continued to beat me. I crawled out of the window and my husband also followed."

When Sadia arrived at the hospital the following morning, according to Dr Safi, the director of public health, and Razmara, they found out that the right side of her major labia (outside fatty tissue covering the vagina) had been severed off by a knife. Her pelvis was mutilated and "abused" by hand, and her vaginal canal had been penetrated - with parts of her insides torn out.

"Violence against women is increasing day by day," Safi told Al Jazeera. "Today we even have a case of a woman with her ear cut off."

"But," he continued, "I have never seen anything like this before � not anywhere."

"In order for her to fully recover she needs plastic surgery. We can't do this in Afghanistan, she would need to go outside the country. We were also not able to give her a proper checkup, so we don't even know the full extent of the damage," Safi said.

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The searing hypocrisy of the West

Since the teens went missing from Gush Etzion, a Jewish-only colony in the West Bank, Israel has besieged the 4 million Palestinians who already live under its thumb, storming through towns, ransacking homes and civil institutions, conducting night raids on families, stealing property, kidnapping, injuring, and killing.

Warplanes were dispatched to bomb Gaza, again and repeatedly, destroying more homes and institutions and carrying out extrajudicial executions.

Thus far, over 570 Palestinians have been kidnapped and imprisoned, most notably Samer Issawi, the Palestinian who went on a 266-day hunger strike in protest of a previous arbitrary detention.

At least 10 Palestinians have been killed, including at least three children, a pregnant woman, and a mentally ill man. Hundreds have been injured, thousands terrorized.

Universities and social welfare organizations were ransacked, shut down, their computers and equipment destroyed or stolen, and both private and public documents confiscated from civil institutions.

This wonton thuggery is official state policy conducted by its military and does not include the violence to persons and properties perpetuated by paramilitary Israeli settlers, whose persistent attacks against Palestinian civilians have also escalated in the past weeks.

And now that the settlers are confirmed dead, Israel has vowed to exact revenge. Naftali Bennet, Economy Minister said, "There is no mercy for the murderers of children. This is the time for action, not words."

Although no Palestinian faction has claimed responsibility for the abduction, and most, including Hamas, deny any involvement, Benjamin Netanyahu is adamant that Hamas is responsible. The United Nations requested that Israel provide evidence to support their contention, but no evidence has been forthcoming, casting doubt on Israel�s claims, particularly in light of its public ire over the recent unification of Palestinian factions and President Obama�s acceptance of the new Palestinian unity.

In the West, headlines over pictures of the three Israeli settler teens referred to Israel's reign of terror over Palestine as a "manhunt" and "military sweep." Portraits of innocent young Israeli lives emerged from news outlets and the voices of their parents are featured in the fullness of their anguish. The US, EU, UK, UN, Canada and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) condemned the kidnapping and called for their immediate and unconditional release. Upon discovery of the bodies, there has been an outpouring of condemnation and condolences.

President Obama said, "As a father, I cannot imagine the indescribable pain that the parents of these teenage boys are experiencing. The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth."

Although hundreds of Palestinian children are kidnapped, brutalized or killed by Israel, including several in the past two weeks, there is rarely, if ever, such a reaction from the world.

Just prior to the disappearance of the Israeli settler teens, the murder of two Palestinian teens was caught on a local surveillance camera. Ample evidence, including the recovered bullets and a CNN camera filming an Israeli sharpshooter pulling the trigger at the precise moment one of the boys was shot indicated that they were killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers.

There were no condemnations or calls for justice for these teens by world leaders or international institutions, no solidarity with their grieving parents, nor mention of the more than 250 Palestinian children, kidnapped from their beds or on their way to school, who continue to languish in Israeli jails without charge or trial, physically and psychologically tortured.

This is to say nothing of the barbaric siege of Gaza, or the decades of ongoing theft, evictions, assaults on education, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, color coded permit system, arbitrary imprisonment, restriction of movement, checkpoints, extrajudicial executions, torture, and denials at every turn squeezing Palestinians into isolated ghettos.

None of that seemingly matters.

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"He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.�

 I hope he enjoys the dhal in prison! So disgusted....

A Pakistani immigrant beat his wife to death in their Brooklyn home after she made the mistake of cooking him lentils for dinner instead of the hearty meal of goat meat that he craved, according to court papers.

Noor Hussain, 75, was so outraged over the vegetarian fare that he pummeled his wife, Nazar Hussain, 66, with a stick until she was a �bloody mess,� according to prosecutors and court papers.

�Defendant asked [his wife] to cook goat and [his wife] said she made something else,� the court papers indicated as Hussain�s murder trial opened on Wednesday.

�The conversation got louder and [his wife] disrespected defendant by cursing at defendant and saying motherf-?-ker, and . . . defendant took a wooden stick and hit her with it on her arm and mouth.�

Defense attorney Julie Clark admitted Hussain beat his wife � but argued that he is guilty of only manslaughter because he didn�t intend to kill her. In Pakistan, Clark said, beating one�s wife is customary.

�He comes from a culture where he thinks this is appropriate conduct, where he can hit his wife,� Clark said in her opening statements at the Brooklyn Supreme Court bench trial. �He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.�

Prosecutors, however, said Hussain meant for his wife to die.

�His intentions were to kill his wife,� Assistant District Attorney Sabeeha Madni said in court. �This was not a man who was trying to discipline his wife.�

Madni said that Hussain �brutally attacked his wife as she lay in her bed� � leaving deep lacerations on her head, arms and shoulders, and causing her brain to hemorrhage.

He beat her with a stick that the family had found in the street and used to stir their laundry in a washtub, the court papers state.

He then tried to clean up the blood that had splattered onto their bedroom wall before calling his son for help, Madni said.

�I killed her. Hurry up and come over,� Hussain told his son, according to prosecutors.

Madni also said Pakistani women who lived in the same building as the Hussains would testify about the beatings Nazar received at the hands of her husband.

�They have told us about years of abuse they witnessed,� Madni said.

Hussain met his wife in Pakistan and the couple married before moving to Brooklyn, prosecutors said.

The trial continues Thursday before Judge Matthew D�Emic.

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InshaAllah this evil man will die in prison, shunned by his entire community. Also the daughter must have known what what was going on she should have been  punished accordingly.

A pensioner who repeatedly raped a deaf and mute girl he had trafficked into the UK to work as his domestic servant has been jailed for 13 years.

Ilyas Ashar, 84, brought the girl to the UK from Pakistan in June 2000 when she was aged around 10. She was beaten and forced to sleep and work in the cellar of Ashar's five-bed family home in Eccles, Greater Manchester.

Their victim, who had no family or friends in the UK and had never been to school in Pakistan or Britain, was taught by the Ashars to sign her name so they could steal more than �30,000 in benefits. She was made to work for the Ashars for almost a decade.

The girl was sexually abused from pre-puberty, Minshull Street crown court in Manchester heard. Ashar would routinely rape the girl in the cellar and other houses the family owned while she tried to fight him off.

Ashar was convicted by a jury last week of 13 specimen counts of rape, though the court heard that the abuse happened "many, many times more". He was convicted at an earlier trial of two counts of trafficking a person into the UK for exploitation, two counts of furnishing false information to obtain a benefit and one of permitting furnishing of false information to obtain a benefit.

His wife, Tallat Ashar, 68, was jailed for five years for two counts of trafficking a person into the UK for exploitation and four counts of furnishing false information to obtain a benefit.

Their daughter, Faaiza Ashar, 46, who was found guilty at an earlier trial of two counts of furnishing false information to obtain a benefit and one count of permitting furnishing of false information to obtain a benefit, was given a 12-month community order with 300 hours of unpaid work.

Passing sentence, the judge Peter Lakin said: "You Ilyas Ashar and you Tallat Ashar did not treat this girl as a human being. To you she was merely an object to be used, abused and cast aside at will.

"You took full advantage of her extreme vulnerability. You exploited her physically, you exploited her mentally and you exploited her economically. There was throughout a distasteful undercurrent of violence and intimidation.

"All that she had in her life was the love of her family and her own human dignity. You two took that away from her. You consigned her to a life of misery and degradation."

He added: "Throughout these proceedings not one of you have shown any remorse. You are concerned with your own selfish, self-centred interests. You Ilyas and Tallat Ashar are deeply unpleasant, highly manipulative and dishonest people."

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