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

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

Whereas the Taliban have always imposed restrictions to manipulate the our bodies of Afghan women, the decree is the first for this regime the place legal 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 wear 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 choice.

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

The ministry statement provided an outline: “Any garment protecting the physique of a lady is taken into account a hijab, offered that it isn't too tight to symbolize the physique components neither is it thin enough to disclose the body.”

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

“If a girl is caught with out a hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) can be warned. The second time, the guardian will be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian will be imprisoned for three days,” in response to the assertion.

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

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

The new decree is the most recent in a collection of edicts proscribing women’s freedoms imposed since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan final summer season. Information of the decree was received with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan ladies and activists.

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

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

“I'm a training Muslim and value what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim men, they've a problem with my hijab, then they should observe their own hijab and decrease their gaze,” she said.

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

As an unmarried girl who looks after her mom, Marzia does not have a mahram. She is the only real breadwinner in her small family.

“I'm single, and my father died very long ago, and I take care of 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 asked.

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

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

“When I try to explain I don’t have one, they won’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter that I'm a revered professor; they present no dignity and order the taxi drivers to abandon me on the roads,” she stated.

“I have had to walk several kilometres to house or my classes on multiple occasion.”

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

Activist Huda Khamosh was a leader in the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that happened 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 feminine protestors held in Kabul.

“The Taliban regime was imposed on us, and their self-imposed rules have no authorized foundation, and send a flawed message to the younger ladies of this generation in Afghanistan, reducing their id to their garments,” stated Khamosh, who urged Afghan girls to raise their voices.

“Never be silent,” she stated.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are more than simply the proper to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh stated, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that focused solely on the appropriate to marriage, but did not handle issues of labor and training for girls.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] just isn't insignificant progress to lose overnight. We received this on our own would possibly, fighting the patriarchal society, and no one can remove us from the group.”

The activists additionally mentioned that they had predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and placed equal blame on the worldwide community 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 worldwide community maintain women’s rights as “a non-negotiable part of their engagement and negotiations with the Taliban”.

However the worldwide community had failed Afghan women yet again, Hamidi mentioned.

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

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

“It's a blatant violation of the right to freedom of selection and movement, and the Taliban were given the space and time [by the international community] to impose further reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi mentioned.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

“The world is betraying an entire technology with their silence,” she stated.

“It is a crime in opposition to humanity to permit a country to show into a jail for half its population,” she said, including that repercussions from the ongoing situation in Afghanistan shall be felt globally.

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

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

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

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