According to Reuters, 35-year old Zahra tried to burn herself to death in order to escape from her hellish marriage. Her husband often beat, tortured and attempted to murder her. Now, she is aware of a safer method: divorce.
In Herat Province of Afghanistan, there are an increasing number of women who have the same fate as Zahra, but now, with the help from a woman charity organization, they begin to declare war on the family law, seeking for divorce. However, divorce is a taboo to the devout Muslim group.
She said, “I have never had a day of happiness being together with my husband, he is simply not human. He used to beat me every day in the past.” She showed the scars on her right leg and foot; these were the results from electric shocks which were done intentionally to her by her husband.
Zahra (she did not want to give her full name for security reason) was married at the age of 14; she said she was suffering from abuses for all these years. The property dispute with her husband’s family had turned her marriage into a nightmare.
“They tried to murder me three to four times, there was one time that they fed me rat poison………..because I asked for divorce. I could not go out, all my four brothers were searching for me, and they wanted to kill me.”
Divorce caused her father to cut off relationship with her; in addition, depriving her custody of her seven sons and two daughters.
During the initial stage of her divorce, her ex-husband agreed to let her bring up the two daughters as long as she did not get married again. But, there is little work available for women in Afghanistan. She decided to get married again because of her poor financial situation. When discovered by her ex-husband, he took away her two daughters.
Man’s law….
Suraya Pakzad established a hiding place for women in Herat; this helped many women who divorced their husbands, including Zahra.
According to Pakzad, divorce rate doubled in Herat. However, according to a report, cases of suicide on the other hand decreased. She said, “Because women have come to know that burning themselves to death cannot help them solve their problems.”
According to the Islamic Law in Afghanistan, a man does not need to get permission from his wife to divorce her; but if a woman wants to seek for divorce, she has to get permission from her husband. Furthermore, a witness is required in the court to prove that the divorce is reasonable.
The Chief Prosecutor of Herat, Maria Bashir said, “In order for a man to seek divorce, he just has to say that his wife has committed misconduct at home; however, if a woman wants to divorce, she has to prove that her husband has been away from home for a long time, or prove that her husband cannot feed the family due to poor financial condition or physical disabilities or impotent or abuses and threatens her life.
In order to get their husbands agree to divorce, women are often forced to give up custody of their children. This dispels the idea of divorce in many tortured women. Besides, due to the cost incurred in the process of divorce, difficulties in getting a lawyer and suffering shame, many women are not willing to go to court. In addition, they have to bear the heavy burden of looking for evidence.
80% of women in Afghanistan are not educated; therefore, they do not have the way to solve problems and have chosen an extremely gloomy way, like committing suicide.