Afghanistan | The Taliban ordered women to be silent in public and banned the song – Women defy the ban by singing on social media videos

“Always when it is necessary for an adult woman to leave her home, it is her duty to cover her voice, face and body.”

Among other things, this is stipulated in the new “Law on the Promotion of Virtues and Combating Vices”, which the extremist Islamist Taliban movement ruling Afghanistan put into effect on Wednesday of last week.

It is an even wider restriction of women’s rights with several regulations and prohibitions written into the law, which are justified by the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia.

In addition to the fact that women are forbidden to speak in public places in the country of more than 40 million inhabitants, their singing or reading aloud cannot be heard anywhere else in their homes either. This is to prevent men drifting into “temptation or vices”, British newspaper The Guardian tells.

Last the new law announced last week to silence women has been met with consternation in women’s and human rights organizations and probably also among women in Afghanistan.

In recent days, videos have been published on social media in which women living in Afghanistan defy the new law by singing.

Videos have been compiled, for example, by Al Jazeera, a channel popular in Muslim countries. You can watch the compilation from this link.

Afghan or foreign women living abroad have also shown their support for Afghan women by singing.

Women’s and restricting girls’ rights is part of a much broader “legislative reform” that the Taliban has pushed through in the country since the last international troops left the country three years ago. The US armed forces left the country after 20 years of war at the end of August 2021.

For example, the Taliban has reinstated public executions. Last March, the top leader of the Taliban movement Hibatullah Akhundzada instituted public floggings. At the same time it was announced that stoning would be reintroduced as a means of execution, a lecturer at England’s Durham University Kambaiz Rafi says The Conversation website in his writing.

Sentences of flogging and stoning can be prescribed for example, for women who commit adultery.

According to Rafi, for example, the rules related to women’s speech can be enforced by any “capable” member of the community. The testimony of two persons considered reliable about the violation of the law is sufficient to bring charges.

“This presents a disturbing prospect of arbitrary accusations based on personal or political vendetta,” Rafi wrote.

Although the song videos are a sign of some kind of resistance, there are no signs that Afghan women have opportunities to challenge their country’s old-fashioned rulers in any meaningful way.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on Tuesday, through his spokesman, called the new laws harsh and demanded their immediate repeal. According to him, the new laws make permanent “policies that completely erase the presence of women from public life”.

According to Türk, women’s “voices are silenced and their right to self-determination is taken away from them, which in practice aims to make them faceless and voiceless shadows”.

Human Rights Watch by the woman’s voice is equated in the new law with the concept of sharia law plowswhich usually defines which parts of the body men and women should cover.

The UN Women’s Organization stated on Wednesday in his statementthat women are also prohibited from interacting with non-Muslims. In addition, they are not allowed to use public transport alone and are forbidden to look at men they are not married to or who are not related to them.

of the UN according to the Taliban movement, after the fall of 2021, more than 70 orders and laws have been drawn up that restrict women’s rights. For example, it is forbidden for girls to go to school and study after they turn 12.

Funded by the EU and implemented by the UN Women’s Organization, in June published in the study referred to a survey that only one percent of Afghan women think they have the opportunity to influence the lives of their communities.

According to a survey conducted last year by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, eight percent of Afghan women knew a woman or girl who had attempted suicide after the fall of 2021. Almost 70 percent knew a woman or girl who said they suffered from anxiety or depression.

The Taliban movement came to power for the first time in the fall of 1996, after which the movement significantly restricted the rights of women and girls. The US-led coalition drove the movement from power at the end of 2001, after which a clear change for the better in the position of women and girls that lasted for a couple of decades was seen, especially in the capital Kabul and other cities.