Eritrean men have been asked by the government to marry more than one wife or risk being jailed for life.This is 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.
In the statement,
Eritrea called for all men in the country to marry at least two wives and the
government assured the men that it would pay for the marriage ceremonies and
houses.
According to the government, the order is
because there is an acute shortage of men occasioned by causalities during the
civil war with Ethiopia.
Afkinsider.com said the document,
which could not be independently verified, warned that any man or woman who
opposes the decision “will face a life sentence”.
The The document in
Arabic, which is in Arabic, says, “Based on the law of God in
polygamy, and given the circumstances 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.”
More than 150,000
Eritrean soldiers were killed during the secession war from Ethiopia between
1998 and 2000. At the time Eritrea had about four million people.
Eritrea, is a country
in the Horn of Africa. With its capital at Asmara, it is bordered
by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south,
and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of
Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea, across
from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
The nation has a total
area of approximately 117,600 km, and includes the Dahlak
Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands. Its name Eritrea is based on
the Greek name for the Red Sea, which was first adopted
for Italian Eritrea in 1890.
The country ranks that
worst (189 out of 189) on the World Bank’s ease-of-doing-business index.
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