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

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

Whereas the Taliban have always imposed restrictions to control the our bodies of Afghan ladies, the decree is the first for this regime the place prison punishment is assigned for violation of the costume code for ladies.

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 girls to wear a hijab”, or headband.

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

Also acceptable as a hijab, the assertion declared, is a protracted black veil masking a lady from head to toe.

The ministry assertion offered an outline: “Any garment protecting the body of a lady is taken into account a hijab, provided that it isn't too tight to signify the physique elements nor is it thin enough to disclose the physique.”

Punishment was also detailed: Male guardians of offending women 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) might be warned. The second time, the guardian will likely be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian will likely be imprisoned for three days,” in response to the assertion.

Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry, stated that government staff who violate the hijab rule can be fired.

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

The new decree is the latest in a series of edicts proscribing women’s freedoms imposed for the reason that Taliban seized power in Afghanistan final summer. Information of the decree was acquired with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan ladies and activists.

“Why have they diminished women to [an] object that's being sexualised?” requested Marzia, a 50-year-old university 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 value 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 lower their gaze,” she mentioned.

“Why should we be treated like third-class residents as a result of they cannot practice Islam and control their sexual wishes?” the professor requested, anger evident in her voice.

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

“I am unmarried, and my father died very way back, and I take care of my mother,” she stated.

“The Taliban killed my brother, my solely mahram, in an assault 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 whereas travelling on her own to work in her university, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids girls from travelling alone.

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

“When I attempt to clarify I don’t have one, they received’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter that I'm a respected professor; they show no dignity and order the taxi drivers to desert me on the roads,” she stated.

“I have needed to stroll a number of kilometres to home or my courses on more than one event.”

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

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

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

“By no means be silent,” she mentioned.

“The rights granted to a girl [in Islam] are more than just the suitable to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh stated, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that focused solely on the proper to marriage, but did not tackle points of labor and training for women.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] shouldn't be insignificant progress to lose in a single day. We received this on our personal may, preventing the patriarchal society, and nobody can take away us from the group.”

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

However the international group had failed Afghan women but once more, 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 girls,” she mentioned.

The present situation has resulted from flawed insurance policies and the international neighborhood’s lack of “understanding on how critical ladies’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she said.

“It is a blatant violation of the proper to freedom of alternative and motion, 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 generation with their silence,” she mentioned.

“It is a crime against humanity to allow a country to turn into a jail for half its population,” she mentioned, adding that repercussions from the continued situation in Afghanistan might be felt globally.

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

“We are a rustic that has produced a few of the most brilliant women leaders. I used to show my college students the value of respecting and supporting women,” 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.”