A court in Sweden sentenced a Dagestani woman to 120 hours of community service, who took her 18-year-old daughter to Dagestan and tried to forcibly marry her to a stranger. informs project “Legal Initiatives”. She also has to pay her daughter 30,000 Swedish kronor ($ 3,426) in compensation.
The incident took place in the summer of 2021. The girl has lived in Sweden since the age of nine and has dual citizenship. She arrived in Dagestan on June 23 at the request of her parents “to visit her grandfather and attend the wedding of relatives.” However, upon arrival, she learned of plans to marry her off. After her refusal, they began to beat her, took her phone and documents, and threatened her with “honor killings.” In the midst of preparations for the wedding, she managed to send a message to a friend in Sweden, the country’s authorities contacted the “Justice Initiative”. With the help of human rights activists, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Dagestan and the Swedish authorities, the girl managed to leave Russia.
During the trial the woman pleaded not guilty… According to her, her daughter knew that she would marry a relative, and she accepted it positively. However, the court found the woman’s testimony less convincing than her daughter’s statement.
Human rights activists regularly report on “honor killings” in the North Caucasus. Dutch Foundation “Legal Initiative” in 2018 after interviews with residents of Dagestan got information about the death of 33 people based on “honor” for the period from 2012 to 2017. In total, 39 people were killed during this time, of whom 36 were women and three were men.
In 2020, human rights defenders learned of eight more such killings. Some of them happened long ago. LGBT people are in particular danger in Chechnya: large-scale raids and assassinations reported “Novaya Gazeta” and other media. One of the latest high-profile cases of forced marriage is the story of Khalimat Taramova from Chechnya.
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