Women tortured for saying 'no'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- 18-year-old Mumtaz bears the scars of an acid attack after she refused marriage
- Two armed men pulled her head back and poured acid all over her face
- Mumtaz now lives in a shelter for abused women in Kabul, Afghanistan
- A 2008 Global Rights study said 87% of Afghan women reported suffering from domestic abuse
Kabul (CNN) -- When 18-year-old Mumtaz walks into a
room the first thing you notice about her is the patchwork of painful
puffy red scars that stretch across her face.
"I feel so bad, I do not look at myself in the mirror anymore," Mumtaz said.
She is the victim of a
scorned man who decided if he couldn't marry her, he'd make sure no one
else would want to. The man had asked for her hand in marriage, but
Mumtaz's family declined the offer. One night she says several men
showed up at their home.
They beat up her family,
and finally two armed men held her, pulled her head back, and let the
man who had wanted to marry her pour acid all over her face.
Tortured Afghan girl tells her story
"I was in the hospital
for 10 days in Kunduz, and later they brought me to Kabul," Mumtaz said.
"Most of my body was burned. When the doctor gave me medicine I felt
like I was being thrown into a fire."
Billions in cash leaving Afghanistan
A few of the men involved
have been arrested but not the one responsible for changing Mumtaz's
face forever. This was the first time she had agreed to show her face
and tell her story on television, partly because she fears for her life.
America rushing to leave Afghanistan?
Mumtaz has been through
hell, which makes the second thing you notice about her all the more
remarkable. She smiles every chance she gets.
Most of body was burned, when the doctor gave me medicine I felt like I was being thrown into a fire
Mumtaz
"I guess it is just my nature," she said.
The shelter where Mumtaz
now lives is a haven for women who have been abused. Right now there are
16 women there and some with young children. Many have been there for
years because they simply have nowhere else to go.
"This shelter has helped
us a lot. If they were not here to help me, I would have been dead by
now. My life was in a great danger, " Mumtaz said.
Mumtaz is learning to read and write for the very first time and is hoping to receive treatment for her scars in India.
Just across the hall from her there is another girl with a soul-destroying story of abuse.
Sahar Gul had been
beaten, burned, scalded with water and had her finger nails ripped out
after being married off to a man more than twice her age when she was
just 13 years old.
"Sahar Gul's brother
married her to this person in return of 200,000 Afghanis (about $4,000
dollars). Sahar had about 15 to 20 'good days' with her husband but then
problems started to arise; (The family started telling her) you are a
child and cannot give birth and that you do not understand how to be a
wife," Gul's attorney Shukria Khaliqi told CNN.
In Afghanistan it is an
accepted tradition that the husband-to-be's family pay a dowry, also
known as the bride price, to get a bride. But her new family had
expectations that Gul could not meet.
Gul said when she didn't
conceive a child her husband and his family started complaining she was
eating too much food. They called her useless, stopped feeding her,
locked her in a basement and began torturing her. She told us they also
told her to sell herself to other men, which she refused.
"They used to bring boys into the house. They used to say that they want to make money and wanted to buy a car," Gul said.
Gul's mother-in-law,
sister-in-law and father-in-law were convicted and sentenced to 10 years
in jail for the torture but are appealing the ruling. Gul's husband is
still on the run.
Mumtaz and Gul's stories
illustrate the fragile state of women in Afghanistan. Human rights
groups say overall conditions for women in the country have improved
since the U .S. led war, but there are still too many cases where women
are treated as subhuman.
"Since 2001 there has
been some really important progress. Literacy has improved. There are
about two million more girls in school right now then there were at the
time when the Taliban fell. Infant mortality has fallen and age
expectancy has increased. But I still think the overall picture is less
than people really hoped for," Heather Barr of Human Right's Watch in
Afghanistan said.
A 2008 study by Global Rights revealed 87% of Afghan women reported suffering from domestic abuse.
"It [domestic violence]
is a silent tsunami because nobody sees it but it's taking the life of
women. And many women turn to self-immolation or commit suicide or throw
themselves in the rivers to escape the situation. It's something we do
not see, because it's happening within the families," Afghanistan Member
of Parliament, Fawzia Kofi told CNN.
Kofi has been fighting to try and get the government to pay more attention to issues facing women.
Recognizing the problem,
President Hamid Karzai signed legislation aimed at eliminating violence
against women in Afghanistan. Women's rights advocates say the law is
good but enforcement of the law is lax.
Kofi, along with human
rights advocates, worries about what will happen to women, if
international aid for services halts along with the pullout of NATO
troops and the threat of the Taliban in government.
"I think the biggest
fear, and concern all of us have, is that we go back to the dark period
from where we had to look at the whole world from a small window," Kofi
said.
(Eric Krebs/National Geographic)[Shine's daily spotlight of the most jaw-dropping photo from today's news.]
