Taliban Pressure Women in Afghanistan to Cover Up
These are perilous instances for Afghan ladies. The Taliban display no signal of easing a crackdown now no longer most effective on such simple rights as training and jobs for girls, however on each aspect of public life, from deportment to tour.
Her mom begged her now no longer to visit the protest, whilst Maryam Hassanzada turned into on her manner out the door.
But Hassanzada, 24, reassured her mom, then joined a dozen different girls protesting a Taliban decree this month requiring Afghan girls to cowl themselves from head to toe.
Their faces uncovered, the girls chanted “Justice! Justice!” and “Stop tyranny towards girls!” They protested for approximately 10 mins earlier than Taliban gunmen more or less broke up the demonstration. The protesters stated they have been held via way of means of Taliban protection officers for 2 hours, puzzled and berated, then launched with a caution now no longer to protest once more.
Hassanzada turned into unbowed.
“If we don’t protest, the sector won’t recognize how badly Afghan girls are oppressed,” she stated later.
These are perilous instances for Afghan girls. The Taliban display no signal of easing a crackdown now no longer most effective on such simple rights as training and jobs for girls, however on each aspect of public life, from deportment to tour.
The cowl-up decree, which additionally entreated girls to live domestic except that they'd a compelling motive to head out, observed a preceding rule requiring girls who tour extra than approximately forty five miles from their houses to be observed via way of means of a male relative.
In August, the Taliban promised much less restrictive guidelines in the direction of girls than for the duration of their preceding rule withinside the overdue 1990s.
“There could be no violence towards girls, no prejudice towards girls,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid informed reporters.
Instead, in a be counted of months, the Taliban have imposed hard decrees which have dragged girls from the relative freedoms carried out over the last many years to a harsh interpretation of Islamic regulation that smothers girls’s rights.
On the streets of the capital, compliance with the decree is mixed.
In the Dasht-e-Barchi district, domestic to Hazaras, a predominantly Shiite Muslim minority, only a few girls cowl their faces — besides for surgical mask for COVID-19. But in close by Karte Naw, an ethnic Pashtun location, a part of the Sunni majority, maximum girls put on hijabs, or headscarves, that cowl their faces.
Some girls in Kabul stated that guys on the road had burdened and berated them once they regarded in public with their faces uncovered.
Outside the capital, maximum girls appear to be obeying the decree. Across the country, girls say that Taliban enforcers have accosted them, now and again violently, and ordered them to cowl up.
In the northern province of Takhar, Farahnaz, a college pupil, stated non secular police had installation checkpoints to look at rickshaws sporting girls to class. Those who have been now no longer included in all-black hijabs have been roughed up and despatched domestic, she stated.
“I had a coloured headband, however they despatched me returned domestic and stated I needed to put on a black hijab and niqab,” she stated, regarding a garment that covers the hair and face besides for the eyes.
She requested to be diagnosed via way of means of most effective her first call for worry of retribution.
Anisa Mohammadi, 28, a attorney in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, stated she had offered a burqa due to the fact she feared that her honor might be puzzled if she did now no longer put on it. She stated non secular police there have been intently tracking girls and ordering them to cowl up.
In Baghlan province, additionally in northern Afghanistan, Maryam, 25, a girls’s rights activist who has refused to cowl her face, stated that a chum have been warned that she might be flogged if she persisted to put on most effective a headband.
“I’m scared,” stated Maryam, who requested that her remaining call now no longer be published. “The Taliban informed me that I’d higher now no longer come to the town once more if my face isn't always included.”
In Kabul, a 24-year-vintage college pupil who wore a headband however no face masking to a famous pastime location stated that she have been struck on the pinnacle via way of means of a rifle butt wielded via way of means of a passing Taliban gunman who shouted at her to cowl her face.
Taliban gunmen have pointed guns at girl protesters, sprayed them with pepper spray and referred to as them “whores” and “puppets of the West,” Human Rights Watch has stated.
Local information media stated that a few girl college students at Kabul University have been despatched domestic via way of means of Taliban enforcers for now no longer complying with the hijab decree. And Human Rights Watch stated that Taliban non secular police tried to compel Afghan girls running for the U.N. venture in Kabul to cowl up.
Muhammad Sadiq Akif, spokesperson for the Virtue and Vice Ministry in Kabul, denied that any girls have been accosted or punished. He stated that ministry patrols had now no longer compelled girls to cowl themselves however had simply defined the decree to inspire complete compliance.
And he denied that girls have been pressured to put on black hijabs, announcing that they may put on hijabs of any color.
“Out of recognize for the sisters of our country, we do now no longer prevent, summon or punish any girls,” he stated in an interview on the ministry, which has changed the preceding government’s Ministry for Women’s Affairs.
“The hijab is the command of God and ought to be observed,” Akif stated, including that the law for girls turned into “for his or her personal protection.”
The decree, ordered via way of means of the Taliban’s very best leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, mandated a chain of escalating punishments, together with prison time, for male family of girls who again and again refused to cowl themselves. Akif stated that a few guys have been officially warned however now no longer punished.
That stress turned into denounced via way of means of a few girls.
“My father and brothers do now no longer have a hassle with me,” stated Mozhda, 25, a girls’s rights activist in Mazar-i-Sharif who has refused to cowl her face and requested to be diagnosed via way of means of most effective her first call for worry of retribution.
Until the takeover remaining summer, the Taliban have been out of electricity for two decades, and lots of girls, specifically in cities, have become acquainted with the extra comfortable mores.
“Women now aren't just like the girls of two decades ago, and the Taliban have to recognize that,” stated Fatima Farahi, 55, a girls’s rights activist in Herat, in western Afghanistan.
Farahi stated that she and lots of different girls in Herat had refused to cowl their faces. So far, she stated, she and her colleagues had now no longer been threatened via way of means of the Taliban.
In Kabul, the protesters, who name themselves the Afghanistan Powerful Women’s Movement, vowed to maintain to protest and to apply social media to induce girls to defy the decree.
When Taliban gunmen ordered them to prevent a current rally, a protest leader, Munisa Mubariz, shouted: “You can't prevent our voices!”
The girls stated they have been warned that they might be jailed for 5 days in the event that they protested once more.
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