A female student Kymbat Barkan kyzy was bride-kidnapped on her way to watching a movie about bride kidnapping. The movie was part of a broader campaign taking place in the Issyk-Kul region against the crime. Law enforcement authorities have not yet taken action due to a lack of statement from the victim.
Information about the theft spread to a deputy in the Karakol town council, Salamat Moldosanov. In his words, Barkan kyzy, a Karakol student studying at a teacher training college had gone to watch the movie about bride-stealing with her friends.
“She was forcibly taken away and loaded by two boys into a car and taken to their countryside home,” said Moldosanov.
According to the girl herself, she did not know her captors before they kidnapped her.
Kymbat Barkan kyzy’s own mother agreed to allow her daughter to marry the man who stole her and asked the police and teachers at the college “not to come” to the house where she had been taken.
“She was not allowed to call after the abduction, but had [her parrents] come to collect her, she would have of course have gone back with them,” says Moldosanov, referring to Kymbat’s words.
Stealing Girls
The investigation into Barkan kyzy’s theft has been limited.
When, the deputy director of the school where Barkan kyzy was doing her teacher training called the Karakol police, the police initially refused to take action without a declaration by the parents of the student.
Nevertheless, a few hours later the police arrived, and lead investigator Suyun Kulanbaev and two other detectives requested that the deputy director and the heads of the student council write an explanatory letter.
When the NGO Ventus, which defends kidnapped women, sent a formal appeal to the Governor of the Issyk-Kul region Deputy Governor Valeri Setchihin instructed the police to take action.
However, the Issyk-Kul region Attorney General, Talent Abylov said that the law should not deal with the kidnapping of girls as bride kidnapping is a national tradition.
“The Attorney General is [only] interested in serious things,” added Abylov.
The case of Kymbat Barkan kyzy is not unique, even in the teacher training college where she studied. Since the beginning of 2011 a single class in the college has lost three female students to the ‘tradition’.
A dangerous trend
The campaign Barkan kyzy was supposed to be attending was part of an educational project against bride kidnapping, carried out by the organization Kiz Korgon.
In Karakol the campaign will take place over a period of six weeks – films will be shown and leaflets handed out about this phenomenon.
According to British newspaper The Independent, a third of ethnic Kyrgyz girls in Kyrgyzstan are given to marriage by force, and in some regions this figure rises to 80 percent of all marriages.
However, as the newspaper notes, many Kyrgyz see it as more of a tradition than a crime, despite the fact that since the beginning of 2011 in Kyrgyzstan at least two suicides of abducted girls have been recorded.
Another common problem is the unwillingness of relatives to take back girls who have escaped forced marriages.
In the photo: A shot from the documentary film by Peter Lom on Bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan
Editors: Diana Rakhmanov and Bektour Iskender
Author: Azat Ruziev