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

The Taliban has issued yet another decree imposing additional restrictions on Afghan girls, and criminalising their clothes.

Whereas the Taliban have all the time imposed restrictions to control the bodies of Afghan girls, the decree is the primary for this regime the place criminal punishment is assigned for violation of the dress code for women.

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

The ministry, in a press release, identified 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 overlaying a woman from head to toe.

The ministry statement provided a description: “Any garment protecting the body of a woman is considered a hijab, offered that it isn't too tight to characterize the body components neither is it skinny sufficient 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 girl is caught with out a hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) will likely be warned. The second time, the guardian can be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian can be imprisoned for three days,” in keeping with the assertion.

Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry, stated that government employees who violate the hijab rule will likely be fired.

And male guardians discovered guilty of repeated offences “will be despatched to the court docket for further punishment”, he stated.

The new decree is the latest in a collection of edicts limiting ladies’s freedoms imposed since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last summer time. News of the decree was obtained with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan women and activists.

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

The professor’s name has been changed to guard her identity, as she fears Taliban repercussions for expressing her views publicly.

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

“Why ought to we be treated like third-class citizens because they can not practice Islam and management their sexual needs?” the professor requested, anger evident in her voice.

As an single lady who looks after her mother, Marzia doesn't have a mahram. She is the sole breadwinner in her small household.

“I am single, and my father died very long ago, and I take care of my mother,” she said.

“The Taliban killed my brother, my solely 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 asked.

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

“They frequently stop the taxi I'm in, asking where my mahram is,” Marzia said.

“When I attempt to clarify I don’t have one, they won’t listen. It doesn’t matter that I am a respected professor; they present no dignity and order the taxi drivers to desert me on the roads,” she mentioned.

“I've needed to walk a number of kilometres to dwelling or my lessons on more than one event.”

Marzia’s sentiments have been echoed by ladies’s rights activists primarily based in Afghanistan and outdoors the nation.

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

“The Taliban regime was imposed on us, and their self-imposed guidelines don't have any authorized basis, and send a flawed message to the young women of this generation in Afghanistan, decreasing their identification to their clothes,” said Khamosh, who urged Afghan women to lift their voices.

“Never be silent,” she mentioned.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are extra than just the best to choose one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh said, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that targeted solely on the right to marriage, but did not handle points of labor and schooling for girls.

“Ladies have dignity and company over their lives,” she mentioned.

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] will not be insignificant progress to lose in a single day. We won this on our own may, fighting the patriarchal society, and no one can remove us from the neighborhood.”

The activists also stated that they had predicted the current developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the worldwide neighborhood for not recognising the urgency of the scenario.

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

However the international community had failed Afghan women but again, Hamidi stated.

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

The current situation has resulted from flawed policies and the international neighborhood’s lack of “understanding on how severe women’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she stated.

“It's a blatant violation of the fitting to freedom of alternative and movement, and the Taliban got the area and time [by the international community] to impose extra reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi said.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

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

“It's a crime in opposition to humanity to allow a country to turn into a jail for half its population,” she mentioned, adding that repercussions from the ongoing scenario in Afghanistan shall be felt globally.

Marzia, the professor, shared an identical sense of disappointment.

“We are a country that has produced a few of the most brilliant ladies leaders. I used to teach my students the value of respecting and supporting girls,” she stated.

“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 items with every new ‘legislation’ and decrees they concern that contradicts our Islamic and Afghan values.”