A top human rights advocate hopes that new efforts will end Kyrgyzstan’s widespread and violent practice of “ala-kachuu” or bride kidnapping.

Through education initiatives and better law enforcement, “I believe the practice can be significantly reduced very quickly,” Russell Kleinbach, a professor emeritus in sociology from Philadelphia University, told CNA.

Around one-third of Kyrgyz women today, some as young as 13 years old, are abducted and forced into marriage.

Read more about Kyrgyzstan’s bride kidnapping problem from Catholic News Agency. Read about the stories Kathleen Merkel of CRS heard while traveling to the region.

CRS built homes for those affected by violence and flooding last year in Kyrgzstan. Photo by Laura Sheahen / CRS

“The first shock was the flood, the second shock was the violence. We lost hope…we were like zombies.”

Pulling her gray wool shawl tight and hugging herself with her arms, the grandmother rocks nervously on her heels as she sits and talks.  She’s still too scared to give her name, so I’m calling her Zamira.

She and her family had lived through weeks of fear. In May 2010, they were woken from sleep at 2 a.m. by crowds running to escape a rushing torrent. The townspeople live at the base of mountains in Kyrgyzstan, a central Asian country that experiences hard rains in spring.  Floods have always been a concern in her town, but they hadn’t wreaked such havoc in over a decade. As Zamira fled to higher ground, the water swiftly ate away the mud walls of her house, toppling the ceiling.
(more…)

Sohiba Mamatova and her family outside of their new home after violence broke out in Kyrgyztan last year. Photo by Jonathan Seiden for CRS

Sohiba Mamatova is bending over a tiny plant in a big bucket. “I love flowers,” she says as she peers at the small leaves that are just emerging.

The plant is about two inches tall. It was a lot taller in June 2010, when all her plants—along with the rest of her garden, her family’s house, and their belongings–were burned down. As ethnic violence tore through her hometown in the central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, families fled for their lives while gunfire and burning bottles of gasoline hit their homes.

Three of Sohiba’s four children had escaped their house before the worst came. When the furious mob arrived, Sohiba’s husband drew attention to himself so that 43-year-old Sohiba and their teenage son could run to a small mountain nearby and climb up. From above, they watched the fire consume everything they owned.
(more…)

Families whose homes were burned down in June are receiving help in Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country between China and Russia. In July, CRS began distributing mattresses and sheets to people who are staying with relatives—or sometimes sleeping outside–because their houses were destroyed during an outbreak of ethnic violence.

The mattresses and sheets helped not only the recipients, but also those who made them: people with vision and hearing impairments. “People were pleased that the mattresses and bed sheets were locally produced by the Blind and Deaf Society and not brought in from another country,” says Andrew Schaefer, Emergency Team Leader for CRS Kyrgyzstan. In an area called Jalalabad, over 1550 people affected by the violence received the bedding.
(more…)

Marguba Kamabarova sits near a burned home in her neighborhood in Jalalabad in southern Kyrgyzstan. Her own home was burned as well. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

“We went to my aunt’s house when the war began,” says 11-year-old Shaumuhammad. “We didn’t see it when they burned our house. We hid in the basement and I heard the ta-ta-ta of the guns.”

“Then they burned my aunt’s, so we went to my older sister’s house.”

It wasn’t an official war, but it seemed like it to the children. When violence broke out in southern Kyrgyzstan in mid-June, families fled over roofs to safety or huddled in basements. With their Central Asian country—not far from Russia and next to China—in crisis, many women and children from towns went to the border and stayed in any place they could find. “We slept in a horse stable for ten days,” says Shaumuhammad’s neighbor.
(more…)