Women abducted for marriage, and often raped, in Indonesia – it’s the custom, villagers say

A 21-year-old planned to study at university, but her dreams were crushed when five men on the island of Sumba carried her off, screaming, to marry a stranger

A week later a breastfeeding mother was snatched for forced marriage. Now the practice, a perversion of island custom, may end with the signing of an agreement

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A young woman in Sumba plays a musical instrument, the junga. The Indonesian island is known for its charm and traditional culture, but one tradition, known as catch-a-bride, involving the abduction of young women for forced marriage, has led to a backlash recently. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 7:45am, 20 Jul 2020Updated: 7:46am, 20 Jul 2020

The island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia has abundant natural charms and ancient cultural traditions. Yet Sumba’s many attractions conceal a sinister practice that has allowed men to uproot women from their families, erase their dreams and ambitions, and force them into marriage.

This has been going on for many years on the island of more than 750,000 people, but a recent 29-second video of a young woman desperately crying while she is carried away by five men has captured the attention of Indonesians everywhere.

One June morning this year, a man tied a horse to the fence of a family house where the 21-year-old woman, Ratih*, lived in Dameka village in Sumba, in East Nusa Tenggara province.

“According to tradition, that signifies that a daughter in the family would be taken for kawin tangkap [catch-a-bride],” says Herlina Ratu Kenya, secretary of the Association of Theologically Educated Women (Peruati) Sumba.

A still from the video of Ratih’s abduction on Sumba island that went viral in Indonesia.

Ratih had been working and living in Bali for several years. She was home in Sumba for a few days to take her high-school diploma because she wanted to continue her studies at a Bali university later this year.

Her dreams were crushed when a group of men grabbed her at her friend’s house at 10am that day. “She was screaming and shouting that she didn’t want to go, that she still wanted to study,” Herlina says. The men took her to the house of a young man called Nala*, about a kilometre away.