A dozen Afghan women, most with their faces uncovered, protested this Tuesday in the streets of Kabul against the Taliban’s decision to make it compulsory for women to wear full veils in public.
“Justice, justice! The burqa is not ours,” cried the protesters, who managed to walk about 200 meters before being calmly dispersed by the Taliban, who urged the press to leave.
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The Taliban’s latest restrictions on women’s rights based on their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam have sparked outrage in Afghanistan and among the international community.
On Saturday, the government published a decree, approved by the supreme head of the Taliban and Afghanistan, Hibatullah Akhundzada, orders women to cover themselves from head to toe, face included, when in public.
The Taliban indicated that, in the name of tradition, they preferred the burqa, a full-length veil, usually blue, that fully covers women and leaves a mesh at eye level. But they explained that other veils, which leave only the eyes uncovered, will also be tolerated.
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If Afghan women do not follow the rule, which in the case of female civil servants means sudden dismissal, the security forces must first inform a male guardian or member of the household.
If they persist, he will be called to testify, may “be detained for three days” and “handed over to the courts to receive his punishment” as a last resort.
The Taliban have imposed their restrictive vision of the Islamic veil since last August, but the order of the Ministry of Virtue was published last Saturday.
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They also asked women to “stay home” if they have no compelling reason to go out.
The exclusion of women in daily life goes beyond the imposition of the veil, since the Taliban have prohibited adolescent girls from attending schools, have imposed gender segregation in public places or have banned women from traveling without a male escort on long journeys.
“We want to live like human beings, not like animals, locked in a corner of houses,” one of the protesters, Saira Sama Alimyar, said publicly.
“Do not take women hostage” or “my hijab, my choice, let us breathe” were some of the slogans chanted in the Afghan capital this Tuesday, for the second consecutive day, by several protesters.
Female university students have also criticized the order imposing the burqa, the preferred type of hijab for Tailbans.
“We wear the hijab, it’s fine. But it is our right to decide the type of hijab or the color,” Samira Noorzai, a student, told Efe.
In Kabul, the Taliban decree did not take effect immediately and many women continue to walk the streets with their faces uncovered.
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These new restrictions, denounced by the UN and the United States, confirm the radicalization of the Taliban, who seized power in mid-August. Initially they tried to show a more open face than during their previous government, between 1996 and 2001, when they deprived women of all their rights and imposed the burqa.
Since the Taliban left power in 2001 and until the departure of the last foreign troops last year, Afghan women went back to school and entered the labor market, despite the fact that the country remained very conservative.
But the reality was that since August, the Islamists have progressively excluded women from public sector jobs, banned them from going to secondary school and restricted their right to move.
Numerous soldiers were detained, some for weeks, and demonstrations became rare.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING*
*With information from EFE and AFP
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