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

The Taliban has issued one more decree imposing additional restrictions on Afghan women, and criminalising their clothes.

Whereas the Taliban have all the time imposed restrictions to manipulate the bodies of Afghan women, the decree is the first for this regime the place prison punishment is assigned for violation of the gown code for women.

The Taliban’s just lately reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Advantage and Prevention of Vice announced on Saturday that it is “required for all respectable Afghan women to wear a hijab”, or scarf.

The ministry, in a press release, recognized the chadori (the blue-coloured Afghan burqa or full-body veil) as the “greatest hijab” of choice.

Additionally acceptable as a hijab, the statement declared, is an extended black veil protecting a woman from head to toe.

The ministry statement supplied an outline: “Any garment protecting the physique of a woman is taken into account a hijab, supplied that it isn't too tight to represent the physique parts neither is it thin enough to disclose the body.”

Punishment was also detailed: Male guardians of offending girls will receive a warning, and for repeated offences they will be imprisoned.

“If a woman is caught without a hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) shall be warned. The second time, the guardian will probably be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian will probably be imprisoned for three days,” in line with the assertion.

Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry, said that authorities employees who violate the hijab rule will probably be fired.

And male guardians discovered responsible of repeated offences “can be despatched to the courtroom for further punishment”, he mentioned.

The new decree is the most recent in a collection of edicts restricting ladies’s freedoms imposed because the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last summer time. Information of the decree was acquired with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan women and activists.

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

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

“I'm a practicing Muslim and value what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim men, they've an issue with my hijab, then they need to observe their own hijab and decrease their gaze,” she mentioned.

“Why should we be handled like third-class residents because they cannot practice Islam and control their sexual needs?” the professor asked, anger evident in her voice.

As an unmarried lady who takes care of her mother, Marzia does not have a mahram. She is the sole breadwinner in her small household.

“I'm single, and my father died very way back, and I take care of my mom,” she said.

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

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

“They often stop the taxi I am in, asking where my mahram is,” Marzia said.

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

“I have had to stroll several kilometres to house or my lessons on multiple occasion.”

Marzia’s sentiments have been echoed by girls’s rights activists primarily based in Afghanistan and out of doors the nation.

Activist Huda Khamosh was a leader in the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that passed off after the Taliban takeover final summer time. 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 authorized basis, and ship a incorrect message to the young women of this era in Afghanistan, lowering their identity to their clothes,” mentioned Khamosh, who urged Afghan ladies to lift their voices.

“By no means be silent,” she stated.

“The rights granted to a lady [in Islam] are extra than simply the suitable to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh stated, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that focused only on the precise to marriage, however didn't tackle points of labor and schooling for women.

“Ladies have dignity and agency over their lives,” she stated.

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] is just not insignificant progress to lose in a single day. We gained this on our personal would possibly, combating the patriarchal society, and no one can remove us from the community.”

The activists additionally stated they'd predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the worldwide group for not recognising the urgency of the scenario.

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

However the worldwide neighborhood had failed Afghan girls yet again, Hamidi mentioned.

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

The current situation has resulted from flawed policies and the worldwide community’s lack of “understanding on how critical girls’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she said.

“It is a blatant violation of the right to freedom of choice and motion, and the Taliban got the space and time [by the international community] to impose extra reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi mentioned.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

“The world is betraying a whole generation with their silence,” she said.

“It's a crime against humanity to permit a rustic to turn into a prison for half its inhabitants,” she stated, including that repercussions from the ongoing state of affairs in Afghanistan will be felt globally.

Marzia, the professor, shared a similar sense of disappointment.

“We are a country that has produced some of the most sensible women leaders. I used to show my college students the worth of respecting and supporting girls,” she said.

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

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