Rural Women in Kyrgyzstan: Ayalzattyn tagdyry: mezgil kүүsүndө Women’s Fates Dont Choose Times An Interview with Cholpon Koichumanova

In one case, a woman had been subjected to 15 years of violence by her husband. “He would beat her severely until she would lose consciousness,” the lawyer said. To try to escape her husband’s threats, the woman jumped from a building with her baby. With no regard for the domestic abuse that drove her to jump, officials prosecuted her for attempting to kill her child. She is awaiting appeal in detention and is not receiving psychological or other assistance as a victim of abuse, the lawyer said. Of 7,178 family violence cases registered in 2018, 369 serious https://asian-date.net/central-asia/kyrgyzstan-women criminal cases were initiated – approximately 5 percent.

A woman holds up photos of two women who were killed by their kidnappers in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on April 8, 2021. As younger people in Kyrgyzstan move to urban areas or abroad, rural areas in Kyrgyzstan are increasingly left to women. In this interview, Dr. Koichumanova talks about some of her findings and shares her views on how to expand women’s prospects in Kyrgyz society. The project has been implemented with the support of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. For the last few years, Professor Cholpon Koichumanova has been working on a project studying the role and place of women in modern Kyrgyzstan. “There is a criminal liability for the threat of using violence that is dangerous to life and health . But criminal liability occurs only if there are sufficient grounds to fear the implementation of the threat,” she said.

  • Only one in 1,500 cases of abduction results in a judicial sentence in Kyrgyzstan .
  • The Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Kyrgyz Republic refused to grant us interviews.
  • For the last few years, Professor Cholpon Koichumanova has been working on a project studying the role and place of women in modern Kyrgyzstan.
  • The UN Working Groupondiscrimination against women and girlswas created by the Human Rights Council in 2011 to identify, promote and exchange views, in consultation with States and other actors, on good practices related to the elimination of laws that discriminate against women.
  • Several Kyrgyz women confirmed for us that they had agreed to be kidnapped before marriage, to uphold a tradition they see as romantic.

In December 2011, the four police officers who had tortured him were charged with abuse of power and unlawfully entering his house. Sharobodin Yuldashev was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for participating in mass riots, destroying property, robbery and taking hostages. In August, the Law on Protection from False and Inaccurate Information was signed by the president, amid concerns that it unduly restricted the right to freedom of expression and could prevent criticism of public figures. It empowered unnamed state bodies to shut down or block websites for publishing “false or inaccurate” information, on the basis of a complaint by a private individual or a legal entity. In March, civil society activist Tilekmat Kurenov was detained and later charged with “calling for mass riots” and for the “violent overthrow of the government”.

In 2019, she was transferred to the passport control department at Manas International Airport, and soon she received her first promotion to the officer rank. “My goal is to get the rank of colonel, since now that I have become a service officer, I can count on a long-term career in the Border Service,” – Nurkyz shares her plans. For three years of border service work, 28-year-old Nurkyz Nurlanova has maintained more than 150 automated passport readers at the Manas International Airport in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Women in Kyrgyzstan also face other dilemmas in a society that often blames a woman for the breakup of her marriage. Statistics from 2019 show that 86 percent of women withdrew their abuse complaints.

Kyrgyzstan Woman royalty-free images

Sometimes, grooms use rape or other physical violence to coerce women to consent to marriage – though that’s not the norm. The government is supporting awareness raising campaigns, and the NGO “Women Support Centre” has been working with the government to monitor the impact of the new legislation. These measures should be stepped up, along with community leaders speaking out, more legal accountability for perpetrators, and increased assistance and recourse for victims. Since Kyrgyzstan’s independence in 1991, Kyrgyz have often asserted their ethnicity and traditions as a way to distance themselves from their Soviet past and affirm the country’s independent identity. For the same reasons, incidents are underreported to the authorities, particularly if the woman stays with her abductor. Nurkyz works at the Manas International Airport border checkpoints as an officer of the Automated Border Control System .

Police registered 7,178 cases for all of 2018, more than half of which involved physical violence. Publicly available data does not specify the number of bride kidnapping cases reported or prosecuted. The government should monitor responses by law enforcement and judicial bodies to complaints of domestic violence and early and forced marriage, including the issuing and enforcement of protection orders and prosecution of cases. Widespread education and awareness-raising campaigns are needed to change behavior and combat harmful attitudes. When police left the two in a room alone together, Bodoshev stabbed Burulai multiple times and reportedly carved her initials and those of the fiancé she had intended to marry into her skin. The killing spurred public pressure to tackle bride kidnapping, a practice some in Kyrgyzstan defend as “tradition” and which persists despite criminalization and toughened legislation. Gender inequality and discrimination serve as a root cause of gender-based violence in Kyrgyzstan, a pervasive and persistent concern among human rights activists, including Bishkek Feminists Initiatives .

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From early childhood, Nurkyz watched her father with great interest and enthusiasm when he repaired cars, and often helped him. Later, Nurkyz decided to study engineering, successfully passed the selection test for admission to a local university, becoming the only one among her peers to successfully graduate from her studies. This website is a project of the Women Peace and Security Programme of the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom.

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In March 2010, opposition politician Roza Otunbaeva rose to power as caretaker president following a revolution against Bakiyev’s government, becoming Kyrgyzstan’s first female president. In Kyrgyzstan, the law enforcement agencies are very male-dominated, and women mostly do paperwork. A gender-balanced composition of state bodies could help to prioritize the issue of domestic violence. It is important to cultivate social empathy and mindfulness regarding women’s rights, raise awareness among law enforcement agencies and educate women and girls about their rights. In addition, in recent years, women have turned to the traditions and skills of needlework inherited from their mothers and grandmothers—carpet-weaving, embroidery, making products from felt, etc.—to alleviate poverty and unemployment.

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