The Taliban have already drastically restricted the rights of Afghan girls and women since their return to power a year ago, and could be tempted to go even further if the international community does not mobilize more forcefully for the slow down, warns an Amnesty International researcher who recently investigated Afghanistan.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
Nicolette Waldman said Tuesday in an interview with The Press that the leaders of the ultra-religious movement know “that the world has changed” since the time when they first ruled the country, from 1996 to 2001, and that they cannot a priori “adopt policies as restrictive as before without suffering any backlash”.
“However, we can fear that they will feel encouraged to do so if there are not more reactions to their decisions”, notes Mme Waldman, who hopes to shake people’s minds with a new report on the “slow motion death” of Afghan women.
The 90-page document, released Wednesday, paints an alarming picture of the situation based in particular on interviews with a hundred women and girls in the country and dozens of humanitarian workers.
Pressure from the Taliban, the report points out, has had the effect of drastically limiting access to education.
PHOTO LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
A woman wearing a burka accompanies her two children, in the suburbs of Kandahar.
After claiming that the girls could continue their secondary education, the country’s leaders in March cited “a technical issue” related to the development of a school uniform to order their return home, and they have been postponing their return ever since. .
Yasamin, a 27-year-old aid worker, said she helped set up underground schools to circumvent the problem despite fear of reprisals.
At the university, the compulsory wearing of the burqa and the separation of genders, which leads to the arrangement of separate classes and limits their right to speak, cause serious headaches for female students.
They must also deal with the discouragement stemming from the fact that the Taliban have considerably reduced their employment prospects by reducing the place of women in the labor market.
Metra, a former journalism student, gave up out of spite. “I concluded that there’s no point studying if I can’t do what I love, so I quit college,” she said.
PHOTO DANIEL LEAL, FRANCE-PRESSE AGENCY
Shia women leave the Sakhi Shah-E Mardan mosque in Kabul.
The Taliban have also imposed severe restrictions on movement in society on women, who must now be accompanied even in town by chaperones, normally from their family.
The measure, which was originally intended to apply to long-distance travel, was widened in May when the Ministry “for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” ruled that women should not show their faces in public and stay at home “unless necessary”.
Case of torture
Afghan women who contravened these directives have been apprehended and detained for “moral corruption”, reports Amnesty International, which has noted several cases of torture.
A woman caught unchaperoned testified that she had been repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. “They called me a prostitute, a slut, things like that. The guard holding the gun told me he would kill me and no one could find my body,” she said.
The deterioration of women’s rights is particularly evident in the treatment of victims of domestic violence, notes the Amnesty report, which is alarmed by the disappearance of institutions supposed to offer them protection, in particular the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
Before the arrival of the Taliban, there were a series of shelters to house women in distress, but they have been dismantled in the last year, often leaving them alone to face their tormentors.
“When asked directly, Taliban leaders say the grievances of abused women should be heard in court, but they will not be comfortable bringing complaints in a male-dominated system. Even less if they can’t go out without a chaperone. […] It’s willful blindness, “says M.me Waldman.
The proliferation of marriages of young girls, which is partly explained by the impoverishment of the population, is another glaring illustration of the seriousness of the situation of women, notes the researcher, who urges the international community to adopt targeted sanctions against Taliban leaders to compel them to correct course, she said.
Many Afghan women interviewed by Amnesty International testify to great loneliness, but also to real anger at the relative indifference of the international community.
“People don’t see and hear what’s happening to us because they themselves aren’t affected. They would only understand if it happened to them,” said Jamila, a school principal interviewed for the report.
“They wonder how it is possible that the world is not more disturbed by what is happening to them”, notes Mme Waldman.