Mbabane, Swaziland
The king of Swaziland has unexpectedly lifted his ban on girls under 18 having sex. King Mswati III, the country’s absolute monarch, imposed the ban in 2001 in response to the huge rise in AIDS cases in the tiny, landlocked kingdom. Almost half of the population of a little over a million has been infected by HIV. But the king himself was accused of flouting the ban after he took a 17-year-old to be his ninth wife. Hundreds of young women protested outside one of his royal residences and threw down the tassels they were required to wear as marks of their virginity. The king paid the penalty decreed for defying the ban in traditional style by surrendering a cow, which the protesters promptly roasted and ate.
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