Afghan girls deplore Taliban’s new order to cowl 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 govern the our bodies of Afghan girls, 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 recently reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice introduced on Saturday that it is “required for all respectable Afghan ladies to wear a hijab”, or headscarf.

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

Additionally acceptable as a hijab, the assertion declared, is a protracted black veil covering a girl from head to toe.

The ministry statement offered an outline: “Any garment overlaying the physique of a woman is considered a hijab, offered that it is not too tight to symbolize the physique components neither is it thin sufficient to reveal the body.”

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

“If a girl 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 shall be imprisoned for 3 days,” based on the statement.

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

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

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

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

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

“I am a training Muslim and value what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim men, they've an issue with my hijab, then they need to observe their very own hijab and lower their gaze,” she said.

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

As an single woman who looks after 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 mother,” she mentioned.

“The Taliban killed my brother, my only mahram, in an attack 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 personal to work in her university, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids ladies from travelling alone.

“They commonly stop the taxi I am in, asking the place my mahram is,” Marzia stated.

“When I try to explain I don’t have one, they won’t listen. It doesn’t matter that I am a revered professor; they show no dignity and order the taxi drivers to abandon me on the roads,” she mentioned.

“I've had to stroll several kilometres to dwelling or my courses on multiple event.”

Marzia’s sentiments had been echoed by women’s rights activists based in Afghanistan and out of doors the country.

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

“The Taliban regime was imposed on us, and their self-imposed rules haven't any authorized foundation, and ship a mistaken message to the younger ladies of this generation in Afghanistan, reducing their id to their garments,” stated Khamosh, who urged Afghan ladies to boost their voices.

“By no means be silent,” she mentioned.

“The rights granted to a girl [in Islam] are extra than simply the fitting to choose one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh mentioned, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that targeted only on the correct to marriage, however did not tackle issues of labor and education for women.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] isn't insignificant progress to lose overnight. We received this on our personal might, combating the patriarchal society, and no one can remove us from the neighborhood.”

The activists also mentioned they had predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and placed equal blame on the worldwide community for not recognising the urgency of the situation.

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

But the international community had failed Afghan women yet 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 women,” she stated.

The present situation has resulted from flawed insurance policies and the international community’s lack of “understanding on how severe women’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 house and time [by the international community] to impose additional reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi stated.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

“The world is betraying a complete era with their silence,” she said.

“It is a crime towards humanity to permit a country to turn into a jail for half its inhabitants,” she mentioned, adding that repercussions from the continuing scenario in Afghanistan might be felt globally.

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

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

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

“My coronary heart breaks into items with each new ‘legislation’ and decrees they challenge that contradicts our Islamic and Afghan values.”