WUNRN
AFGHANISTAN - GIRL MURDERED BY
SLITTING THROAT FOR REFUSAL OF MARRIAGE
Violence against women and girls remains
a major problem in
November 29, 2012 - Kunduz, Afghanistan: Two men have been arrested for slitting the throat of a 15-year-old Afghan girl after her family refused a marriage proposal, police say.
The girl was carrying
water from a river to her village home in northern Kunduz province on Wednesday
when she was murdered, police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini said.
"The two men
attacked her and slit her throat with a knife," he said. "They were
arrested and are in police custody."
Mr Hussaini said one
of the suspects had proposed marriage to the girl, but her family had rejected
the offer.
Extreme violence
against women and girls remains a major problem in the conservative Muslim
nation more than a decade after US-led troops brought down the notoriously
brutal Taliban Islamist regime.
According to figures
by British charity Oxfam, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced
physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.
Last month a
20-year-old woman was beheaded by her husband's family in the western
And in September,
five people were arrested over the public flogging of a 16-year-old girl for
allegedly having an affair.
The girl was whipped
100 times in front of village elders and family members in central Ghazni
province. Her alleged boyfriend was fined.
Unmarried girls are
often confined to the home and forbidden from maintaining any contact with men
outside the immediate family.
AFP