The parliament of Kazakhstan may introduce sanctions for bride theft by the end of 2024 with legislative amendments. Experts hope that the changes to the Criminal Code will eradicate this “medieval tradition”. Because today, in fact, every girl in the country between the ages of 16 and 25 is aware that she can be kidnapped for the purpose of marriage and thus put an end to all her plans for the future. And every story about bride theft almost always follows the same scenario.
Gulmira's story: “They kidnapped me for the purpose of marriage”
Gulmira K., who is a nurse in Almaty, told DW that she was kidnapped when she was 19. “It will soon be 20 years since then, but I still remember everything. I was coming home from university in the evening when a car approached me, from which three men jumped out. They grabbed me and threw me into the back seat like a sack of potatoes. Two hours later we arrived at a village house, where women began to put a white cloth on me - as is the tradition. I immediately realized that I had been kidnapped for the purpose of marriage. I tried to escape, but I couldn't. Only then did I see my future husband, whom I had never known before, I had never seen him before. "He took my virginity that very day," says Gulmira, who does not dare to give her last name.
According to her, she managed to contact her parents only a week later. She expected support from them, but never met understanding. "My father said that it was my fault - I had disgraced the whole family. That's why he didn't want to see me anymore, and I had nowhere to go - so I became the wife of a man whose family was very poor. And my parents were wealthy people," explains the woman, who managed to escape from virtual captivity only nine years later.
„At that time, I already had two children. I went with them to the district clinic, where I met a classmate, to whom I told the story. It was she who suggested that I go back to Almaty with the children. Later, my friend helped me with both the divorce and finding a job. I think my ex-husband didn't care - he didn't care. If there had been criminal prosecution for bride theft back then, my life would have been completely different. I never could have graduated from university," the woman says with regret.
Discussions on the punishment for bride theft
In Kazakhstan, discussions about the need to criminalize bride theft have been ongoing since the mid-1990s. And human rights activists constantly point out that the current legislation does not allow the kidnappers to be held accountable.
The first indication of a possible change came from Ombudsman Artur Lastayev, who in August 2023 proposed introducing criminal prosecution for bride theft. The Prosecutor General's Office supported the initiative in principle, but no further action followed. Six months later, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev also intervened. “In our country, there are people who, under the guise of national traditions, are trying to impose the practice of bride kidnapping. This obscurantism cannot be justified by anything and is contrary to the ideals of a progressive society in which the dignity, rights and freedoms of every person are an absolute value”, the president emphasized.
The tradition of bride kidnapping in its current form has never existed in Kazakhstan, says Murat Abenov, a deputy from the ruling Amanat party, to DW. “In the Middle Ages, the kidnapping of women was permissible only in the course of military operations - as a trophy. The kidnapping of a girl from clans that were not at enmity with each other was considered a very serious crime. The punishment was death, and the clan of the kidnapper had to pay large reparations. There are also cases when girls ran away with their lovers, but this was by mutual consent. All this has nothing to do with today's interpretation of bride kidnapping, in which the girl only learns who her husband will be before the wedding," explains the MP.
If the proposed legal amendment is adopted, the punishment for kidnapping a person for the purpose of entering into a forced marriage will be imprisonment for up to three years. And if the kidnapped person is a minor - up to five. According to Abenov, 214 complaints have been filed over the past three years about stolen brides. “However, I know that there have been many more attempts to file complaints. Of these 214 cases, only ten have reached court, the rest were closed due to the lack of elements of a crime. It turns out that the state machine has been encouraging this type of crime all along."
"A clumsy attempt to justify violence"
According to human rights activist Khalida Adzhigulova, this case is a de facto failure of state policy in the field of legal education of citizens of Kazakhstan, especially in those regions where bride theft is a practice.
“Anyone who appeals for the observance of traditions is actually making a clumsy attempt to justify violence. I think these are medieval practices that are not at all relevant for the civilized society of the 21st century. But this means that neither in schools nor in universities do our young people learn enough about human rights”, Adzhigulova told DV. She added that today's Kazakh youth are increasingly abandoning the observance of traditions for which there are no objective grounds.
Author: Anatoly Weisskopf