Afghan women deplore Taliban’s new order to cowl faces in public | Taliban News

The Taliban has issued yet another decree imposing further restrictions on Afghan women, and criminalising their clothing.

While the Taliban have at all times imposed restrictions to govern the bodies of Afghan girls, the decree is the first for this regime the place felony punishment is assigned for violation of the dress code for girls.

The Taliban’s recently reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Advantage and Prevention of Vice announced on Saturday that it's “required for all respectable Afghan ladies to put on a hijab”, or scarf.

The ministry, in a statement, recognized the chadori (the blue-coloured Afghan burqa or full-body veil) because the “greatest hijab” of alternative.

Also acceptable as a hijab, the statement declared, is a long black veil covering a woman from head to toe.

The ministry assertion provided an outline: “Any garment overlaying the physique of a girl is considered a hijab, supplied that it is not too tight to represent the physique elements nor is it skinny enough to disclose the physique.”

Punishment was additionally detailed: Male guardians of offending ladies will receive a warning, and for repeated offences they are going to be imprisoned.

“If a girl is caught with no hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) will be warned. The second time, the guardian shall be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian might be imprisoned for 3 days,” in keeping with the assertion.

Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry, stated that authorities workers who violate the hijab rule will be fired.

And male guardians found guilty of repeated offences “might be sent to the court docket for further punishment”, he stated.

The brand new decree is the newest in a sequence of edicts proscribing ladies’s freedoms imposed for the reason that Taliban seized power in Afghanistan final summer season. News of the decree was acquired with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan girls and activists.

“Why have they reduced women to [an] object that is being sexualised?” requested Marzia, a 50-year-old college professor from Kabul.

The professor’s identify has been modified to protect her identification, as she fears Taliban repercussions for expressing her views publicly.

“I'm a working towards Muslim and worth what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim males, they've a problem with my hijab, then they should observe their very own hijab and lower their gaze,” she stated.

“Why should we be handled like third-class residents as a result of they can not practice Islam and control their sexual needs?” the professor asked, anger evident in her voice.

As an single girl who takes care of her mother, Marzia doesn't have a mahram. She is the only breadwinner in her small household.

“I'm single, and my father died very way back, and I look after my mom,” she mentioned.

“The Taliban killed my brother, my only mahram, in an attack 18 years in the past. Would they now have me borrow a mahram for them [to] punish me next time?” she requested.

Marzia has repeatedly been stopped by the Taliban while travelling on her own to work in her university, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids ladies from travelling alone.

“They usually cease the taxi I'm in, asking the place my mahram is,” Marzia mentioned.

“When I try to clarify I don’t have one, they gained’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter that I am a revered professor; they show no dignity and order the taxi drivers to abandon me on the roads,” she mentioned.

“I've had to stroll several kilometres to home or my courses on a couple of occasion.”

Marzia’s sentiments had been echoed by women’s rights activists based in Afghanistan and out of doors the nation.

Activist Huda Khamosh was a pacesetter within the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that passed off after the Taliban takeover last summer. She evaded arrest throughout a Taliban crackdown on female protestors in February. Later, Khamosh confronted Taliban leaders at a convention in Norway, demanding that they launch her fellow feminine protestors held in Kabul.

“The Taliban regime was imposed on us, and their self-imposed rules don't have any legal basis, and ship a flawed message to the young women of this technology in Afghanistan, decreasing their identity to their clothes,” said Khamosh, who urged Afghan girls to boost their voices.

“By no means be silent,” she mentioned.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are extra than simply the right to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh stated, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that centered solely on the precise to marriage, however didn't handle issues of labor and training for ladies.

“Girls have dignity and agency over their lives,” she said.

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] shouldn't be insignificant progress to lose in a single day. We won this on our personal would possibly, preventing the patriarchal society, and no one can take away us from the community.”

The activists additionally mentioned they had predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the worldwide neighborhood for not recognising the urgency of the state of affairs.

Samira Hamidi, an Afghan activist and senior researcher at Amnesty International, said that even after the Taliban’s take over last August, Afghan women continued to insist that the international community keep women’s rights as “a non-negotiable part of their engagement and negotiations with the Taliban”.

However the worldwide neighborhood had failed Afghan girls but again, Hamidi stated.

“For a decade Afghan women have been warning all actors concerned in peace negotiations about what returning the Taliban to energy will means to girls,” she mentioned.

The present scenario has resulted from flawed policies and the international group’s lack of “understanding on how severe ladies’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she mentioned.

“It's a blatant violation of the best to freedom of choice and motion, and the Taliban got the space and time [by the international community] to impose further reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi said.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

“The world is betraying an entire era with their silence,” she said.

“It's a crime against humanity to allow a country to turn into a prison for half its population,” she mentioned, including that repercussions from the continued state of affairs in Afghanistan will likely be felt globally.

Marzia, the professor, shared the same sense of disappointment.

“We're a rustic that has produced a few of the most sensible women leaders. I used to show my college students the worth of respecting and supporting women,” she said.

“I gave hope to so many young ladies and all of that has been thrown in [the] trash as meaningless,” she said.

“My coronary heart breaks into pieces with each new ‘law’ and decrees they situation that contradicts our Islamic and Afghan values.”