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

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

Whereas the Taliban have at all times imposed restrictions to control the bodies of Afghan women, 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 Advantage and Prevention of Vice introduced on Saturday that it is “required for all respectable Afghan ladies to wear a hijab”, or scarf.

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

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

The ministry statement provided a description: “Any garment masking the body of a girl is taken into account a hijab, offered that it isn't too tight to represent the body parts nor is it thin sufficient to reveal the physique.”

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

“If a lady is caught with no hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) shall be warned. The second time, the guardian shall be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian will likely be imprisoned for three days,” based on the assertion.

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

And male guardians discovered responsible of repeated offences “will be sent to the court docket for additional punishment”, he mentioned.

The new decree is the latest in a series of edicts limiting women’s freedoms imposed since the Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan last summer season. Information of the decree was acquired with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan women and activists.

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

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

“I am a practising Muslim and worth what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim men, they have a problem with my hijab, then they should observe their very own hijab and decrease their gaze,” she mentioned.

“Why ought to we be treated like third-class residents because they cannot observe Islam and management their sexual desires?” 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 real breadwinner in her small household.

“I'm unmarried, and my father died very long ago, and I look after my mom,” she stated.

“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 own to work in her college, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids ladies from travelling alone.

“They usually cease the taxi I am in, asking where my mahram is,” Marzia mentioned.

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

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

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

Activist Huda Khamosh was a frontrunner within the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that came about after the Taliban takeover last summer. 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 legal foundation, and send a flawed message to the younger ladies of this era in Afghanistan, decreasing their identification to their clothes,” mentioned Khamosh, who urged Afghan ladies to raise their voices.

“By no means be silent,” she stated.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are extra than just the appropriate to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh said, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that focused solely on the fitting to marriage, but did not address points of labor and training for ladies.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] isn't insignificant progress to lose overnight. We gained this on our personal may, combating the patriarchal society, and nobody can remove us from the group.”

The activists additionally said they had predicted the current developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the international group for not recognising the urgency of the state of affairs.

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

But the international community had failed Afghan girls yet again, Hamidi mentioned.

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

The present state of affairs has resulted from flawed policies and the worldwide neighborhood’s lack of “understanding on how severe girls’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she said.

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

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

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

“It is a crime in opposition to humanity to permit a country to turn into a jail for half its inhabitants,” she mentioned, including that repercussions from the continued situation in Afghanistan will probably be felt globally.

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

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

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

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