In
Eritrea the Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in the
country, declared that every man must marry two women or face a jail
sentence.
This
was contained in a statement in Arabic by the Grand Mufti (the highest
official of religious law in the country) which scanned copy surfaced on
social media sites on Thursday last week.
The Eritrean government says they will compensate Eritrean men for the marriage ceremonies and houses.
The
declaration is motivated in part by the shortage of men which is a
byproduct of the Eritrean-Ethiopian War which took placed from
1998-2000. The war left 150,000 Eritrean soldiers dead out of a
population of only 4 million.
A translation of the statement states:
“Based
on the law of God in polygamy, and given the circumstances in which the
country is experiencing in terms of men shortage, the Eritrean
department of Religious Affairs has decided on the following .”
First
that every man shall marry at least two women and the man who refuses
to do so shall be subjected to life imprisonment with hard labour. “The
woman who tries to prevent her husband from marrying another wife shall
be punished to life imprisonment,” alleges the activists in their
translation.
May
1998 to June 2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian war saw 150,000 soldiers killed
from either sides but having a bigger impact on male population in the
tiny Eritrea nation who were then just 4million people in total.
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