Stories Similar to ISIS Practices… Marriage under Threat of Arms by Militia Members

 Three (Militiamen) Share in Marrying One Girl under the Pretext of Sharing the Dowry

 

Investigation: Al-Taj Osman

 

 

A crime that is not talked about daily committed by the Janjaweed gangs in light of the silence of local, regional and international women’s rights organizations.

 

 

The marriage of militiamen to some Sudanese girls in the villages and cities they control has become a disturbing and even dangerous issue due to what results from it afterwards in terms of illegitimate pregnancy and psychological rifts for the girls who are forced, together with their fathers, into this type of marriage. Either to agree or the girl is kidnapped and forcibly married under threat of arms. What is worse and more bitter than this is that the girl is surprised, after completing the marriage ceremonies by a random notary, that she has become the wife of three or four husbands who exchange her with each other, meaning that the militia practices the theory of (polyandry) instead of (polygamy) while the wife is one for all of them!!

 

 

The following investigation reveals more tragedies and hardships related to this type of dangerous, inhumane, and illegal marriage..

 

 

During my forced stay inside Singa before it was liberated by the army, I witnessed a forced marriage ceremony between a militiaman and a young girl who was no more than 17 years old. The groom worked at one of the city’s checkpoints, and one day he saw the girl swaying in front of the checkpoint on her way to her parents’ house near the checkpoint. He fell in love with her and his heart was attached to her, so he decided to marry her by any means. He asked a matchmaker, who cooperated with the militiamen, to tell her family about his desire to marry her. If she agreed, he would shower her and them with money and gold, but if she refused, he would kidnap her and do whatever he wanted to her by force.

 

 

Here, the father of the young girl lost his temper and refused the marriage on the pretext that his daughter was a minor, but in the end he gave in under threat.

 

The groom and a number of his colleagues, the militiamen, came to the girl’s father’s house to complete the marriage ceremonies. They brought with them (a random notary) and he took the data on a paper and completed the contract, amidst the shouts of the militiaman’s colleagues who fired their machine guns in celebration of the completion of the marriage ceremony. After that, the groom (the militiaman) held a lunch banquet that was limited to his colleagues only, then he took his young bride to the marital home; a house owned by one of the citizens after they seized it and made it their headquarters and base, where the groom (the militiaman) made it a place to spend his honeymoon.

 

On the same day of the militiaman’s marriage, shortly before midnight, I heard a loud knock on the door of the courtyard. When I opened it, I was surprised by two armed militiamen riding a motorbike. They asked me to bring the notary. I told them: “There is no notary living in this house. I am staying here as a guest and there is an old man with me, but he is sleeping now.” They did not believe me and pushed me out of their way. They forcibly entered the house and went to the sleeping old man. Then they returned and said to me: “No, this is not the notary we mean.” They left on their way!! There are several cases of forced marriage by the Janjaweed to young girls. For example, there were (11) cases of forced marriage witnessed by the village of Al-Me’alig in Al-Gezira State after the militia took control of it.

 

Polyandry

 

We hear about polygamy, but have you heard of (polyandry)?!!

In short, it is the participation of two or three militiamen in the marriage of one girl. This happened to many girls, where a militia element proposes to marry a girl and her father agrees for fear of rape and receives the dowry. After completing the (sham marriage) ceremony, the groom takes his wife to an empty furnished house and stays there for a day, two or three. After he had his fill of her, the girl only to be surprised by a second militiaman entering. When she tries to seek help from her imaginary groom, he tells her: (You are also my wife, we shared the dowry equally to marry you). The poor girl submits under threat of a gun and is raped as well. After he did the same as his previous colleague, a day or two, he leaves. Again the innocent girl to be surprised by a third militiaman entering and telling her the same thing as his former colleague. When she protests and refuses, he rapes her while her first groom is outside smoking bango cigarettes and drinking local wine with his colleagues, not paying attention to her screams and pleas for him to save her, since he is her first husband.

 

 

The girl was struck by this polyandry with a hysterical state similar to madness and fled back to her family, a human wreck who did not speak to anyone.

 

 

After that, none of her (three husbands) asked about her after all three of them had had their fill of her.

 

The truth is that there are many like this helpless girl who carry tragic stories inside them that would make children’s hair turn gray, similar to what ISIS does to Arab girls and some Sudanese university students who fled their families and joined ISIS and married them. Years later, they came to their senses and returned to Sudan carrying the seeds of their ISIS husbands whom they married in what is known as (pleasure marriage)…

 

The militiamen turned into ISIS members inside Sudan.