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

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

Whereas the Taliban have all the time imposed restrictions to govern the bodies of Afghan women, the decree is the first 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 Advantage and Prevention of Vice introduced on Saturday that it is “required for all respectable Afghan women to put on a hijab”, or headband.

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

Also acceptable as a hijab, the assertion declared, is an extended black veil overlaying a woman from head to toe.

The ministry statement offered an outline: “Any garment covering the physique of a girl is taken into account a hijab, supplied that it isn't too tight to characterize the physique components nor is it thin enough to disclose the body.”

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

“If a girl is caught without a hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) will be warned. The second time, the guardian might be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian might be imprisoned for 3 days,” according to the statement.

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

And male guardians discovered responsible of repeated offences “will likely be sent to the courtroom for additional punishment”, he stated.

The new decree is the most recent in a series of edicts limiting ladies’s freedoms imposed for the reason that Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last summer. News of the decree was obtained with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan women and activists.

“Why have they decreased girls to [an] object that's being sexualised?” asked Marzia, a 50-year-old university 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 practising Muslim and worth what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim males, they have a problem with my hijab, then they should observe their very own hijab and decrease their gaze,” she said.

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

As an unmarried woman who takes care of her mother, Marzia does not have a mahram. She is the only breadwinner in her small family.

“I'm unmarried, 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 assault 18 years ago. 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 college, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids ladies from travelling alone.

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

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

“I have needed to stroll several kilometres to dwelling or my classes on multiple occasion.”

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

Activist Huda Khamosh was a pacesetter in the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that took place after the Taliban takeover final summer season. She evaded arrest during a Taliban crackdown on female 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 rules have no legal foundation, and send a unsuitable message to the young ladies of this generation in Afghanistan, lowering their identity to their clothes,” said Khamosh, who urged Afghan girls to raise their voices.

“Never be silent,” she mentioned.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are more than just the proper to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh said, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that targeted only on the suitable to marriage, but did not deal with issues of labor and schooling for ladies.

“Women 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 community.”

The activists also stated they had predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the worldwide group 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 girls continued to insist that the international community maintain girls’s rights as “a non-negotiable component of their engagement and negotiations with the Taliban”.

However the international neighborhood had failed Afghan women yet once more, Hamidi mentioned.

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

The present scenario has resulted from flawed insurance policies and the worldwide community’s lack of “understanding on how serious girls’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she stated.

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

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

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

“It is a crime towards humanity to permit a rustic to show into a prison for half its population,” she stated, including that repercussions from the continued situation in Afghanistan will probably be felt globally.

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

“We are a country that has produced among the most good ladies leaders. I used to show my students the worth of respecting and supporting ladies,” she stated.

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

“My heart breaks into items with every new ‘law’ and decrees they difficulty that contradicts our Islamic and Afghan values.”