A 20-year-old girl abducted for marriage has been returned to her parents’ house.
The girl was abducted from the courtyard of her house in a village in Bolnisi Municipality, in Georgia’s southern Kvemo Kartli Region, on 10 January.
An investigation has been launched for ‘illegal deprivation of liberty’, which is punishable by up to four years in prison.
The alleged abductor has been identified, according to local community radio station Radio Marneuli, which covers Kvemo Kartli region in Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Russian.
On 11 January, after the girl was brought home by her family, relatives of the alleged kidnapper visited her house asking her parents to withdraw a police complaint against him, and offered that the two marry to ‘settle the problem’, Radio Marneuli reported.
They claim to have witnessed a verbal and physical dispute between two families, as a result of which the girl, who witnessed the dispute, fainted.
After police were called, they explained to the abductor’s relatives that their suggestions to withdraw the complaint was illegal, and urged them to leave.
Bride kidnapping in Georgia, along with widespread practices of early marriages, have come under harsh criticism from women’s rights groups in the country.
Up until 2015, although the minimum legal age for marriage was 18, couples were able to marry at 16 with their parents’ consent. Changes in 2015 restricted this to cases where a girl was pregnant or had a child, and since January 2017 underage marriage has been outlawed entirely.
According to a May 2017 report from Georgia’s Public Defender, early marriages are still a major issue women in Georgia face. It said that in 2015, when underage marriage was not entirely outlawed, the number of such marriages was 611, while in 2016 this had decreased to just 5.
However, the report claimed that despite the sharply-reduced number of officially registered marriages, ‘implementation of a response to actual cohabitation remains a problem to be addressed’, and that the number of under-18 engagements has increased.
An ethnic Azerbaijani teacher in southeast Georgia’s Kvemo Kartli Region has been made to publicly apologise after reporting the kidnapping of one of his former students and criticising Georgia’s Azerbaijani community for endorsing bride kidnapping.
Hamid Sadikh, a geography teacher in the village of Tezekendi in Gardabani Municipality, was widely criticised by other residents of the village after he made a Facebook post on 9 October criticising the incident.
‘One of my students, whom I u
Despite a rise in the awareness of women’s rights in Georgia, feminist activists have found themselves up against a deeply-rooted culture that hinders further progress. Early marriages, a lack of recognition of the need for more female decision-makers, and impassivity towards women’s issues in the male-dominated parliament create a compounding, socially-driven force that stands on the way of gender equality.
Natia was only 17 when she became a bride. A 25-year-old man kidnapped her twice
Women of Georgia — Tamta Abuselidze, 27
‘I heard many times of women’s abductions when I was living in the village. And of course, I never thought that it was a good thing, but I also didn’t know it was illegal. They never taught us anything about it at school, there was no literature about it.’
Women in Georgia very often lack a voice of their own. Their opinions, feelings, dreams, aspirations, and achievements can be conveyed by others, often the men around them. The Women in Geo
‘I was fourteen when I was kidnapped. I lived in a village with my parents, two brothers and my elder sister. I was a teenager by then, but mentally still a child. I liked playing naughty games: climbing trees, jumping from heights, fighting devilishly.’
‘I got a lot of attention because of the colour of my eyes, they said I was beautiful. My mum and aunt often scolded me for my childish antics, and would tell me I was already old. I won’t say I was completely indifferent to the opposite se
A 20-year-old girl abducted for marriage has been returned to her parents’ house.
