The sad story of the children in Sri Lanka who had to get married at a young age

News24xx.com - In Sri Lanka the legal marriage age is 18, but under a decades-old community law, much younger Muslim girls can get married.

As calls grow for this law to be amended, a reporter as quoted from BBC, Saroj Pathirana meets one young girl forced to marry against her will.

When Shafa* was 15, she was forced to get married. "While studying for exams, I fell in love with a boy," Shafa said, tears running down her cheeks.

"My parents did not like it. They sent me to my uncle's place. While I was studying there, a regular visitor told my aunt and uncle that he wanted to marry me."

Shafa, who comes from a Muslim family and lives in a remote village in Sri Lanka, refused. She wanted to marry the boy she loved, after completing her secondary school education.

But despite her objections, her uncle and aunt arranged for her to marry their friend.

Whenever she objected to the marriage, she was beaten. Her uncle and aunt even threatened to kill themselves if she did not listen to them.

"I cut my arms as there was no other option," said Shafa, pulling up her sleeves to show the scars. "I also took some pills from my uncle's place.

"While I was being treated in hospital, they bribed the doctors and took me - together with my saline bottle - to a private hospital. A few days later they forced me to marry that man."

Shafa decided to stay with her young husband as she could see no escape but he suspected she was continuing her relationship with her boyfriend.

"He regularly beat me," she said. "When I told him that I was pregnant, he picked me up and threw me to the floor. He then told me that he only wanted me for the one night, he'd already had me and didn't need me any more."

It was at the hospital that she realised she had lost her baby as a result of the violence.

When Shafa went to the police, they did not take her complaint seriously.
One day she got a call from the mosque in the village. There, her husband agreed to continue the marriage but she refused.

A few days later, she started getting phone calls and text messages from strangers, asking how much she charged to sleep with them.

Shafa realised that her husband had published her photograph and telephone number on social media. The callers threatened her with filthy language and told her: "We got your number from your husband."

"I recorded all these calls. And I still have all the text messages," said Shafa, who could not stop crying but was determined to tell her story.

Shafa's father did not want to get involved with what was happening.
But Shafa's mother is now taking her daughter to a social welfare centre so she can get psychological and legal help in the wake of her traumatic marriage.

They visit the centre in secret because openly seeking psychological help is still a taboo in Sri Lanka.

Shafa's mother supports her five children by doing daily labour jobs in the village. She was evicted from her hometown by Tamil Tiger separatist rebels in 1990.

"I sent my daughter to my brother's place due to one incident. I never thought this would happen to her," she said.

She says she objected to her daughter being forced to marry but her brother did not listen to her.

"It was a forced marriage," she said. "I fear for her safety and her education now [because of the lies her husband has spread about her]. She can't go to classes. She can't even travel on a bus. Her whole future is uncertain."

Every year, hundreds of girls like Shafa from Sri Lanka's Muslim minority are forced to get married by their parents or guardians.

Human rights lawyer Ermiza Tegal says Muslim child marriages have gone up from 14% to 22% within a year in the eastern province, a rise attributed to increased conservatism.

Shafa was 15 years old but Muslim women's groups have documented girls as young as 12 being forced into marriage.