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FROM KYRGYSTAN  |
Thugs in St. Petersburg;
Kidnap-brides in villages
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Documentary filmmaker Antony Butts has contributed outstanding columns to this site on the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. He returns with vignettes from his most recent travels in Kyrgystan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. He has just completed directing a documentary on radiation poisoning in the area. |
By ANTONY BUTTS
of TheColumnists.com
Viktor, a doctor I met in Kyrgystan, told me this story about his experience in St. Petersburg:
Two burly men, over 200 pounds each and with the trademark flat heads of the Russian mafia, were holding Viktor, pushing him forward. Gym buffs, they were obviously feeling confident of their muscles.
He knew there were two more lurking behind him. “God knows,” he thought, “in these times, they’ve probably got automatics trained on me under their winter jackets.” They were taking him to a grand building in the centre of St. Petersburg, the only one in the street not to have its beautiful facade crumbling away. “Get in there!” the big goon with the crooked nose said, pushing him into a room on the second floor. “The boss wants to see you.”
“Hello. My name is Sergei Vladimirovich,” said a quiet-looking man with glasses. He was sitting behind a large Soviet-style wooden desk and was dressed in a smart business suit and dark brown shirt. “I hear you play sambo,” he said, looking up from a piece of paper: “Master of Sport, twice all Russian champion. Impressive. Now you’re training the riot police. Is that correct?”
“That finished after my son died,” Viktor replied.
“Yes, the heroin overdose. He must have been mixing with the wrong sort. These are uncertain times you know. But look, I have a job offer …” He snapped his fingers. “But first I’m afraid that the two gentlemen that brought you here seem to think you have insulted them.”
Viktor looked around. The two muscled thugs approached him. “They’ll kill you, you know,” Sergei said, relaxing into his chair.
“You’re joking” Viktor said nervously.
“I never joke at work” Sergei replied.
The thugs were almost on him. A faint smile began to play on Viktor’s face. His useless eye, usually dull and swollen, flashed. He leapt between the two men and swung his elbow around with all his force, rotating at the knees. The man’s eyes popped as the elbow connected with his neck, and he fell choking. The other thug grabbed Viktor by his arms and tried to head-butt him. Viktor struggled. His thin frame was no match for the other man’s muscles but he ducked his head away and reaching up, grabbed the goon’s head and pulled it back from his neck. Viktor’s other hand deftly felt round to the back of the big man’s neck and with a yank, the thug fell dead.
Viktor felt the pulse of the first man and watched as it ran out.
Sergei Vladimirovich smiled broadly at the devastation. “How much are they paying you at the moment?”
Viktor’s working eye flickered slightly, remembering the ethics of his work. “I work as a surgeon for the St. Petersburg Hospital No. 2. About $45 a month”
Sergei laughed: “We’ll pay you a hundred times that. But this is better than I expected!”
Sergei rose from his chair, slapping Viktor’s slight frame, “Not only are you a killer, but you are also a doctor. Come let me show you your colleagues.”
“I take it I do not have a choice” Viktor said as the two stepped over the two corpses. Sergei pulled the door open and stepped into the next room. Four men were playing pool while two girls, no more than 18, strip-teased in front of a fat man in a corner. Another girl pouted from behind the bar.
“Cognac for our new doctor” Sergei said quietly to the girl.
THE "KIDNAP
BRIDES"
“Bride-kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan is not a tradition. It is a craze and it’s getting out of control,” Gazbubu, a university researcher, told me when I was there recently. Some 40 percent of all Kyrgyz marriages in villages now involve violent kidnapping of girls unknown to the waiting groom.
It’s easy to understand Gazbubu’s exasperation. A former kidnap victim turned women’s rights campaigner, Gazbubu tours local schools to try to prevent this year’s students from being kidnapped and forced into marriage.
In a film I am developing, we follow the case of a local girl, Nulzina, who has been kidnapped by a stranger. The story tracks Gazbubu as she teams up with Nulzina’s real boyfriend, Uluk, to try and rescue her.
These kidnappings are a bizarre perversion of an old tradition: “Bride kidnapping used to be consensual, or involved rich men kidnapping grateful girls from poor families,” Gazbubu tries to explain. “It was never a way for an ordinary guy to kidnap a girl he fancies, rape her and then force her to marry him.”
Unfortunately, Nulzina’s parents show just how easy it is for this new form of bride-stealing to become established. Despite hours of desperate persuasion, her parents are insistent that she must marry her kidnapper: “Her fate has been decided. There’s nothing more to talk about,” her mother says.
My film also follows reluctant groom Ilyas, who while drunk tries and fails to kidnap first one girl, then another. In desperation, his best man then kidnaps his own cousin. Kidnap victim 19-year-old Nuldura is lucky not to be raped. According to Gazbubu, “Ninety percent of kidnapped brides are culturally compelled to sleep with their kidnapper--it’s a type of rape.”
She goes on: “Bride kidnapping has turned violent. Now it’s institutionalized rape. It’s without consent and it has become fashionable.” Her latest research shows it’s up 400 percent since Soviet days and she's desperate for her own people and foreigners to realize that it’s not a tradition at all.
Referring to the only other film on the subject, a 2004 documentary, she says: "The Peter Lom film is misleading. It talks about bride kidnapping as something that is normal. But it’s not.”
Just as it seems that Nuldira is becoming another statistic, her brother rescues her in a fight. As Ilyas’s parents wonder whether he will kill himself out of shame, Nuldira’s parents force their daughter to marry Ilyas. The day ends with her in tears, all the men wasted and Ilyas’s sister eagerly making up the marital bed.
Three months later Nulzina is divorced from her kidnapper. As we go back to Kyrgyzstan we learn that Nulzina was brutally raped on the day of her kidnapping/wedding. Was this the real reason Gazbubu and Uluk failed to change Nulzina’s parents’ mind? Will the parents admit they got it wrong and will Uluk get back together with her? Do Ilyas and his third-choice wife Nuldura live happily ever after?
Most importantly, will Gazbubu win her fight to try to stop this brutal reinterpretation of an old custom? This is the untold story of ignorance vs. truth, a desperate fight for women’s rights, but fundamentally about fighting for love.
©2007 by Antony Butts. TheColumnists.com wishes to acknowledge the special assistance of EYE ON EUROPE Columnist Michael Johnson in arranging the services of Antony Butts. The illustration is from compoents taken from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted Nov. 26, 2007.
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