Afghanistan: Women Continue to Suffer

Monday May 23, 2005

America was supposed to have "liberated" Afghanistan from the grip of the Taliban, but many things haven't changed or at least haven't changed much - for example, the abusive and violent treatment of women. Imagine Germany in 1947 where Jews are still abused and discriminated against. Would people permit that?

Dissident Voice explains:

Afghan women continue to be raped, beaten, and kidnapped on a large scale. Precise numbers were impossible to tabulate as victims of rape in Afghanistan are stigmatized. Not only are they stigmatized, but, according to Amnesty International, Afghan women are frequently prosecuted for the rapes and sexual assaults committed against them. In Afghanistan, being raped constitutes the crime of "zina," or unlawful sexual intercourse.

[M]any women in those prisons are there at the request of a family member. Their "crimes" range from marrying a man of their own choosing to being accused of adultery. Other women are imprisoned for bigamy, which in Afghanistan means their husbands either divorced or deserted them and then changed their minds after the women remarried. ... [S]ome Afghan women are in prison voluntarily. According to the State Department, they chose prison over enduring rampant domestic violence or being forced into arranged marriages. Without shelters for battered women in Afghanistan, prison becomes a viable option.

The Times reports on a women who was murdered because she hosted a popular music show:

[T]wo months ago her bosses were forced to dismiss [Shaima] Rezayee, 24, under pressure from conservative mullahs who were disgusted by the “unIslamic values” of her music show. This week she paid for her unconventional choices with her life: she was shot dead in her home by an unknown assailant.

Police said that they believed the killing was linked to her former job as a “veejay” — video journalist — on Hop, which was broadcast by Tolo TV, one of a number of private stations set up since the fall of the Taleban. ... Tolo quickly became the most watched station in the city with a reported 81 per cent audience share and Hop was its No 1 programme. But it drew the ire of the country’s mullahs and members of the Supreme Court, who were still incensed after losing a battle last year to have women removed from the nation’s television screens.

Rapes, beatings, prison, and even murder are what face women in Afghanistan if they fail to uphold the repressive standards that men insist are God's will. The United States has done little or nothing to stop this — and certainly nothing that has been effective — but you won't hear anything about this directly from the White House. Why not? Why don't they fully disclose the problems in Afghanistan and then explain what they intend to do?

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