An eight-year-old Yemeni girl died of internal bleeding on her wedding night after marrying a man five times her age, a social activist and two local residents said, in a case that has caused an outcry in the media and revived debate about child brides.
Arwa Othman, head of Yemen House of Folklore and a leading rights campaigner, said the girl, identified only as Rawan, was married to a 40-year-old man late last week in the town of Meedi in Hajjah province in northwestern Yemen.
"On the wedding night and after intercourse, she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture which caused her death," Othman told Reuters. "They took her to a clinic but the medics couldn't save her life."
Othman said authorities had not taken any action against the girl's family or her husband.
A local security official in the provincial town of Haradh denied any such incident had taken place. He did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
But two Meedi residents contacted by Reuters confirmed the incident and said that local tribal chiefs had tried to cover up the incident when news first broke, warning a local journalist against covering the story.
Many poor families in Yemen marry off young daughters to save on the costs of bringing up a child and earn extra money from...Read More HERE
1 comment:
I don't mean to seem heartless, but I really don't care. If she didn't die of this, she would have died of dysentery, or measles, or a car accident, or getting beaten to death for wearing makeup, of one of the other ten thousand things that makes life in third world countries really suck. In the grand scheme of things, she just doesn't matter and never did. Instantly replaced. Not even worth taking her to a real doctor to get treated.
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