In another disturbing attack in Afghanistan, two men have been arrested after allegedly cutting the throat of a 15-year-old girl and killing her after her father refused a marriage proposal.
The Guardian reports the girl, Nishina, was allegedly attacked in Kunduz province as she returned home from fetching water.
"A guy by the name of Mohammad Sadeq, he is her cousin, he had proposed to her on his brother's behalf, but Nishina and her family refused the proposal," police spokesman Sayed Sawar Hosseini said.
The suspects then allegedly returned two days later and "slit her throat with a knife," Hosseini told Agence France Presse.
The Telegraph reports the girl's father, Mohammad Rahim, rejected the marriage proposal because he felt his daughter was too young to marry. According to the newspaper, a second suspect was present at the scene. Both suspects were reportedly detained in the Kulkul village of the Imam Sahib district, and they lived in the same village as the victim.
Addressing the nation on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called such aggression a "social menace."
"It destroys love, passion and respect," Karzai said in his radio broadcast to the nation, according to the Guardian. "Children who grow up in families that experience violence may be more depressed and violent."
According to Oxfam, 87 percent of Afghan women report having endured "physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage."
In October, 20-year-old Mah Gul was beheaded by in-laws in Afghanistan's western province of Herat after she had repeatedly rejected her mother-in-law's attempts to force her into prostitution, AFP reported. And in September, a 16-year-old girl was publicly whipped in front of village elders and family members for allegedly having an affair
"We do risk going backwards," Afghan campaigner Wazma Frogh said. "One day we hear that women can't travel alone, another that you are a lesser human being, then this about sharia law. But how is that possible in a country where you have a constitution, supreme court, and judiciary?"
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