Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
January 16, 2017
In a Pakistan family, deal is made, a girl is given as bride
By Kathy Gannon
The Associated Press
AMPUR, Pakistan — Mohammad
Ramzan can neither hear nor
speak, and he has a childlike mind.
But he knew his wife, Saima, was too
young when she was given to him as a
bride.
The 36-year-old Ramzan smiles, eager to
please, as he uses his fingers to count out
her age when they married. One, two,
three … until 13, and then he stops and
looks at her, points and nods several times.
The girl’s father, Wazir Ahmed, says she
was 14, not 13, but her age was beside the
point. It mattered only that she had
reached puberty when he arranged her
marriage as an exchange: his daughter for
Ramzan’s sister, whom he wanted to take
as a second wife.
His first wife, Saima’s mother, had given
him only daughters, and he hoped his
second wife would give him a son. But
Sabeel wouldn’t marry him until her
brother had a wife to care for him.
She would be a bride in exchange for a
bride.
“We gave a girl in this family for a girl in
their family,” Ahmed says. “That is our
right.”
In deeply conservative regions such as
this one in the south of Punjab province,
the tribal practice of exchanging girls
between families is so entrenched, it even
has its own name in Urdu: Watta Satta,
which means give and take.
A girl may be given away to pay a debt or
settle a dispute between feuding families.
She might be married to a cousin to keep
her dowry in the family or, as in this case,
married for the prospect of a male heir.
Many believe their Islamic religion
instructs fathers to marry off their
daughters at puberty.
“If it is not done, our society thinks
parents have not fulfilled their religious
obligation,” says Faisal Tangwani, region-
al coordinator for the independent Human
Rights Commission of Pakistan in nearby
Multan.
Ahmed sees the hand of god in his
daughter’s marriage to a disabled man.
“It was by god’s will that he was chosen,”
he says. “It was her fate.”
Ahmed sits inside the mud-walled
compound where he now lives with his two
J
wives. Outside, stray dogs roam in packs of
three and four. They bite, Ahmed warns.
He says the fact that Ramzan is nearly
three times his daughter’s age is irrele-
vant. But the legal marrying age here is
16, and in a rare move, police did investi-
gate Saima’s marriage after they received
a complaint, possibly from a relative
involved in a dispute with her father.
Ramzan and Ahmed were jailed for a few
days, but Saima testified in court that she
was 16 and they were released. She says
she told the authorities she was 16 to
protect her father and husband.
In Saima’s world of crushing poverty,
where centuries-old tribal traditions mix
with religious beliefs, a crippling cycle
traps even the perpetrators with a life’s
burden: a father who longs for a son to help
support his family; a wife who must
provide that son; a daughter who must
become a mother even when she is still a
child.
Saima’s mother, Janaat, agrees with
marrying off her daughters early. She says
girls are a headache after they reach
puberty. They can’t be left at home alone
for fear of unwanted sexual activity — or
worse, the daughter leaves home with a
boy of her choice.
“That would be a shame for us. We would
have no honor. No. When they reach
puberty quickly, we have to marry them,”
she says. “Daughters are a burden, but the
sons, they are the owners of the house.”
She says she accepted her husband’s
North Korea is a bad trip if you’re looking to get high
By Eric Talmadge
The Associated Press
YONGYANG, North Korea —
North Korea has been getting
some pretty high praise lately from
the stoner world.
Marijuana news outlets including High
Times, Merry Jane, and Green Rush —
along with British tabloids, which always
love a good yarn — are hailing the North as
a pothead paradise and maybe even the
next Amsterdam of pot tourism. They’ve
reported North Korean marijuana to be
legal, abundant, and mind-blowingly
cheap, sold openly to Chinese and Russian
tourists at a major market on the North’s
border for about $3 per pound.
But seriously, North Korea? Baked?
The claim that marijuana is legal in
North Korea is not true: The North Korean
penal code lists it as a controlled substance
in the same category as cocaine and
heroin. And the person who would likely
help any American charged with a crime in
North Korea emphatically rejects the idea
that the ban is not enforced.
“There should be no doubt that drugs,
including marijuana, are illegal here,” said
Torkel Stiernlof, the Swedish ambassador.
The United States has no diplomatic
relations with the North, so Sweden’s
embassy acts as a middleman when U.S.
citizens run afoul of North Korean laws.
P
“One can’t buy it legally and it would be
a criminal offense to smoke it,” Stiernlof
said. He said that if a foreigner caught
violating drug laws in North Korea
happened to be an American citizen, he or
she could “expect no leniency whatsoever.”
Americans have been sentenced to years
in North Korean prisons for such
seemingly minor offenses as stealing a
political banner and leaving a Bible in a
public place.
Even so, the claim that North Korea is a
haven for marijuana smokers has cycled
through the internet in various incarna-
tions with great success over the past few
years.
Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-government-
funded news service, lit up the latest round
of stoner glee in late December with a story
that Chinese and Russian tourists are
stocking up on North Korean pot by the
kilo in Rason, a special economic zone on
the country’s northernmost frontier that
has a large, bazaar-style marketplace. The
same market was the setting for one of the
earliest blogs on the topic, a first-person
account of getting high in the North from
2013.
Categorically confirming or denying
such claims is difficult because access to
the market by foreigners is restricted. But
where there’s smoke, there usually is at
least a little fire.
Continued on page 7
marriage to another woman; after all, it’s
her fault he only has daughters.
“I feel shame that I don’t have a son. I
myself allowed my husband to get a second
wife,” she says.
Her husband’s new wife, Sabeel, says
she agreed to marry Ahmed because of her
brother. She wanted him to have a wife.
“No one had been willing to give their
daughters to my brother,” she says.
Ramzan is quick to extend his hand to
guests who enter through the torn and
tattered curtain that hangs over the front
door to his compound, tucked away in a
narrow alley lined with open sewers.
Ramzan’s elderly parents live with him.
His father rarely leaves his bed, saying he
has trouble walking. His mother begs from
morning until night, sometimes knocking
on doors, other times parking herself in the
middle of a dusty road, her hand
outstretched for donations.
Like Ramzan, she can neither hear nor
speak. Both her hips and one knee have
been broken. She gestures as if breaking a
twig to explain her troubled knee.
Ramzan looks at Saima, her hair hidden
beneath a sweeping shawl, her large
brown eyes downcast.
“I didn’t want to marry her so young. I
said at the time, ‘She is too young,’ but
everyone said I must,” he says through a
series of gestures interpreted by those
around him. He held his hand up just
below his chest, showing how tall she was
when they married.
WATTA SATTA. Mohammad Ramzan, right,
shows the marriage contract with his young bride
Saima, left, in Jampur, Pakistan. Saima was given
as a bride to the older man by her father so he could
marry the groom’s sister, a practice of exchanging
girls that is entrenched in conservative regions of
Pakistan. It even has its own name in Urdu: Watta
Satta, which means give and take. A mix of interests
— family obligations, desire for sons, a wish to hand
off a girl to a husband — can lead to a young teen
in a marriage she never sought. (AP Photo/K.M.
Chaudhry)
Saima doesn’t talk much. Her answers
are short, and matter of fact.
“His sister and my father fell in love and
they exchanged me,” Saima says.
“Yes, I am afraid of my father, but it is
his decision who I will marry and when.”
She picks at the rope bed where she sits
with Ramzan. Her husband often reaches
to touch the top of her head.
He gestures that he is afraid Saima will
leave him one day, and says that god will
be unhappy if she does. Saima had gotten
pregnant soon after she came to live with
Ramzan but lost the child at five months.
Ramzan gestures that he wants Saima to
take some medicine to help her get
pregnant again.
Saima rarely looks in his direction but
says she has no quarrel with him, nor does
she plan to leave.
Saima says she understands her
husband’s gestures, but it’s hard to know.
Most of the translations are done by his
12-year-old niece, Haseena, Sabeel’s
daughter from a previous marriage.
Haseena was 10 when Saima married
her uncle Ramzan and her mother left to
live with the new bride’s father.
Haseena stayed in the house with her
uncle and her elderly grandparents to
cook, clean, and keep Saima company. She
even prepared Saima’s wedding dinner.
“When Saima married my uncle, my
mother told me to leave school and be with
Saima because she will be all alone at
home,” Haseena says.
Haseena recalls that Saima seemed so
young, the family felt sorry for her.
“At her age, she should have been
playing.”
Back at Saima’s old home, her seven-
year-old sister, Asma, wanders around,
shoeless, her hair matted with dirt and
dust. Asma already has been promised to
her cousin, who is about 10. They will
marry when she reaches puberty.
Just another Sunday? North Korea low key on Kim’s birthday
By Eric Talmadge
The Associated Press
YONGYANG, North Korea —
North Korea marked Kim Jong
Un’s birthday in a decidedly low-
key manner.
Though the young leader’s birthday is
well-known throughout the country, it has
yet to be celebrated with the kind of
adulatory festivities that accompany the
birthdays of his late grandfather and
father. Pyongyang residents did what they
do every second Sunday of the new year —
joined in sports events.
Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be 33 or
34 years old and the world’s youngest head
of state, assumed power after the death of
his father, Kim Jong Il, in late 2011.
With the official period of mourning his
father’s death over and his own powerbase
apparently solid, Kim presided over a
once-in-a-generation party congress last
May that was seen by many as something
of a coronation and the beginning of the
Kim Jong Un era.
But he has continued to keep a step or
two behind his predecessors in the coun-
try’s intense cult of personality. Kim’s
grandfather, “eternal president” Kim Il
Sung, and Kim Jong Il statues and por-
traits are found in virtually every public
space or home. Their pins are worn over
the hearts of every adult man and woman.
P
Rumors were rife that a new pin
featuring Kim Jong Un would be issued
during the May party congress, but they
proved to be unfounded. Calendars for this
year don’t denote January 8 as anything
other than a normal Sunday, and there
was no mention of the birthday in Rodong
Sinmun, the ruling party newspaper.
The only time Kim has been honored in
public on his birthday was in 2014, when
former NBA star Dennis Rodman sang
“Happy Birthday” to him before an
exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang.
North Korean officials say the low-key
approach — and the very little information
made public about his wife and family —
reflects Kim’s “humble” nature and re-
spect for his forbearers. Kim seemed to
amplify that image in his New Year’s
address, when he closed with remarks
about his desire to be a better leader.
Even so, 2017 could turn out to be a
bigger than normal year in North Korea
for Kim-related events.
State media have suggested Kim Jong
Il’s birthday in February and especially
Kim Il Sung’s birthday in April will be
celebrated in a more lavish than usual
manner, though exactly what’s in store is
not known. And Kim Jong Un has already
had something of a big New Year’s event —
days after his address, tens of thousands of
North Koreans rallied in Pyongyang in the
customary show of support for their leader.