Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoko Embalo said this Friday that no girl should be married off from now on and warned that anyone who does will be held accountable by the state.
Sissoko Embalo spoke to a group of Muslim believers who prayed with the head of state in the presidency of the Republic during the first Friday prayers of the Muslim month of Ramadan.
After refining his order to ban child begging in the country, the president turned to the issue of child marriage of girls, which is practiced in several Islamic communities in Guinea-Bissau.
“Don’t accept anyone’s marriage. Whoever marries you, don’t accept him, you can come and talk to the president,” said Umaro Sissoko Embalo, addressing a group of girls who were praying in the backyard for the first time. Palace of the Republic in Bissau.
After personally asking each of the children their name, age and whether they go to official school, Umaro Sissoko Embalo suggested that they give up any intention of marrying.
“Whoever talks to you about marriage, tell them you don’t want it because you want to go to school,” Embalo said.
To put it more clearly, the President of Guinea said that from now on “this story about the marriage of children at the age of 14, 15, 17 or 20 years old is over.”
“Children should go to school. In Guinea-Bissau, the official school is in Portuguese, but we do not forbid anyone to send their children to the school for the study of the Koran,” said Sissoko Embalo, who wants children to study doctors. engineers or lawyers.
“Look at these children, no matter how beautiful they are, and someone is thinking of marrying them off. We can no longer put up with this,” said the President of Guinea.
Regarding the issue of the Talibé, children learning the Quran but ending up begging on the streets of Bissau or Dakar, Senegal, Oumaro Sissoko Embalo again noted that this phenomenon “must stop” in Guinea-Bissau.
The Guinean president warned that a Koranic scholar sending any child to beg on the streets of Bissau “will be in trouble with the state” and that the order he gave to the interior minister “should really be carried out.”
To the reaction of some religious leaders who opposed his order, Umaro Sissoko Embalo said that they do not respect the Islamic religion, which stands for respect for human life.
As a representative of the Islamic faith, Embalo said that he has the moral right to decide and determine the end of phenomena such as marriage or child begging in the country.
“If another president had taken these measures, they could have said what he did because he is not a Muslim,” said Umaro Sissoko Embalo.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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