i did not and will not

watch the videos. i don't need to. i can feel their pain without seeing it. the beatings are the least of it

Child Brides Escape Marriage, but Not Lashes

By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan — The two Afghan girls had every reason to expect the law would be on their side when a policeman at a checkpoint stopped the bus they were in. Disguised in boys’ clothes, the girls, ages 13 and 14, had been fleeing for two days along rutted roads and over mountain passes to escape their illegal, forced marriages to much older men, and now they had made it to relatively liberal Herat Province.

Instead, the police officer spotted them as girls, ignored their pleas and promptly sent them back to their remote village in Ghor Province. There they were publicly and viciously flogged for daring to run away from their husbands.

Their tormentors, who videotaped the abuse, were not the Taliban, but local mullahs and the former warlord, now a pro-government figure who largely rules the district where the girls live.

Neither girl flinched visibly at the beatings, and afterward both walked away with their heads unbowed. Sympathizers of the victims smuggled out two video recordings of the floggings to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, which released them on Saturday after unsuccessfully lobbying for government action...............

pic:

Alissa J. Rubin/The New York Times

Sakhina, 15, was sold into marriage to pay off her father’s debts when she was 12 or 13. She is one of four fugitive child brides at a shelter in a secret Kabul location.