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

The Taliban has issued one more decree imposing further restrictions on Afghan girls, and criminalising their clothing.

Whereas the Taliban have all the time imposed restrictions to govern the our bodies of Afghan girls, the decree is the first for this regime the place criminal punishment is assigned for violation of the gown code for girls.

The Taliban’s just lately reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced on Saturday that it's “required for all respectable Afghan ladies to put on a hijab”, or headband.

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

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

The ministry assertion provided a description: “Any garment covering the physique of a woman is considered a hijab, supplied that it isn't too tight to characterize the body components neither is it skinny enough to disclose the physique.”

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

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

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

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

The new decree is the newest in a collection of edicts proscribing women’s freedoms imposed because the Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan final summer time. News of the decree was acquired with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan women and activists.

“Why have they decreased ladies to [an] object that's being sexualised?” asked Marzia, a 50-year-old college 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 worth what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim males, they've an issue with my hijab, then they should observe their own hijab and lower their gaze,” she stated.

“Why ought to we be handled like third-class citizens as a result of they cannot follow Islam and management their sexual wishes?” the professor asked, anger evident in her voice.

As an single girl who takes care of her mom, Marzia doesn't have a mahram. She is the only real breadwinner in her small household.

“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 solely mahram, in an attack 18 years in the past. Would they now have me borrow a mahram for them [to] punish me subsequent time?” she asked.

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

“They often cease the taxi I'm in, asking the place 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 respected professor; they present no dignity and order the taxi drivers to desert me on the roads,” she mentioned.

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

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

Activist Huda Khamosh was a pacesetter within the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that occurred after the Taliban takeover last summer season. 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 have no legal basis, and send a incorrect message to the young girls of this era in Afghanistan, lowering their id to their garments,” mentioned Khamosh, who urged Afghan girls to raise their voices.

“By no means be silent,” she stated.

“The rights granted to a girl [in Islam] are extra than simply the precise to choose one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh said, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that targeted solely on the best to marriage, but didn't deal with points of work and education for girls.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] is not insignificant progress to lose overnight. We received this on our own may, fighting the patriarchal society, and nobody can remove us from the community.”

The activists also said they'd predicted the current developments in Afghanistan, and placed equal blame on the international community for not recognising the urgency of the state of affairs.

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

But the worldwide community had failed Afghan women but again, Hamidi stated.

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

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

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

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

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

“It's a crime towards humanity to allow a rustic to show into a jail for half its inhabitants,” she mentioned, including that repercussions from the ongoing scenario in Afghanistan will probably be felt globally.

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

“We are a country that has produced a few of the most brilliant women leaders. I used to teach my college students the worth of respecting and supporting women,” she said.

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

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