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

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

Whereas the Taliban have at all times imposed restrictions to control the bodies of Afghan girls, the decree is the first for this regime where prison punishment is assigned for violation of the gown code for women.

The Taliban’s lately reinstated Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice introduced on Saturday that it is “required for all respectable Afghan girls to wear a hijab”, or headband.

The ministry, in a statement, recognized the chadori (the blue-coloured Afghan burqa or full-body veil) because the “greatest hijab” of choice.

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

The ministry statement provided a description: “Any garment overlaying the physique of a woman is taken into account a hijab, provided that it's not too tight to symbolize the physique parts neither is it thin sufficient to reveal the physique.”

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

“If a girl is caught with no hijab, her mahram (a male guardian) might be warned. The second time, the guardian will probably be summoned [by Taliban officials], and after repeated summons, her guardian might be imprisoned for 3 days,” according to the assertion.

Akif Muhajir, a spokesman for the ministry, stated that authorities staff who violate the hijab rule might be fired.

And male guardians found responsible of repeated offences “will be sent to the court docket for additional punishment”, he stated.

The new decree is the latest in a collection of edicts limiting women’s freedoms imposed for the reason that Taliban seized energy in Afghanistan final summer season. Information of the decree was obtained with widespread condemnation and outrage by Afghan girls and activists.

“Why have they decreased girls to [an] object that is being sexualised?” asked Marzia, a 50-year-old college professor from Kabul.

The professor’s name has been changed to protect her identification, as she fears Taliban repercussions for expressing her views publicly.

“I'm a practicing Muslim and value what Islam has taught me. If, as Muslim males, they have an issue with my hijab, then they should observe their own hijab and lower their gaze,” she said.

“Why ought to we be treated like third-class residents because they can't observe Islam and control their sexual needs?” 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 breadwinner in her small family.

“I am unmarried, and my father died very way back, and I take care of my mother,” she mentioned.

“The Taliban killed my brother, my only mahram, in an assault 18 years ago. 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 while travelling on her personal to work in her college, which is a violation of an earlier edict that forbids women from travelling alone.

“They usually stop the taxi I am in, asking where my mahram is,” Marzia said.

“When I attempt to clarify I don’t have one, they won’t pay attention. It doesn’t matter that I am a revered professor; they present no dignity and order the taxi drivers to abandon me on the roads,” she mentioned.

“I've had to walk a number of kilometres to house or my classes on more than one event.”

Marzia’s sentiments were echoed by ladies’s rights activists based mostly in Afghanistan and outdoors the country.

Activist Huda Khamosh was a pacesetter in the women-led demonstrations in Kabul that passed off after the Taliban takeover last summer season. She evaded arrest throughout a Taliban crackdown on feminine protestors in February. Later, Khamosh confronted Taliban leaders at a conference in Norway, demanding that they launch her fellow female protestors held in Kabul.

“The Taliban regime was imposed on us, and their self-imposed guidelines haven't any authorized foundation, and ship a improper message to the younger ladies of this generation in Afghanistan, decreasing their identity to their clothes,” stated Khamosh, who urged Afghan girls to raise their voices.

“Never be silent,” she stated.

“The rights granted to a woman [in Islam] are extra than simply the fitting to decide on one’s husband and get married,” Khamosh stated, referring to a Taliban decree on rights that targeted only on the fitting to marriage, however didn't address issues of work and training for women.

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

“Twenty years [of gains made by Afghan women] is not insignificant progress to lose overnight. We gained this on our own might, combating the patriarchal society, and nobody can take away us from the neighborhood.”

The activists additionally stated they had predicted the present developments in Afghanistan, and positioned equal blame on the international community for not recognising the urgency of the situation.

Samira Hamidi, an Afghan activist and senior researcher at Amnesty International, mentioned that even after the Taliban’s take over final August, Afghan girls continued to insist that the worldwide group hold women’s rights as “a non-negotiable element of their engagement and negotiations with the Taliban”.

But the worldwide group had failed Afghan girls yet again, Hamidi mentioned.

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

The current state of affairs has resulted from flawed policies and the worldwide group’s lack of “understanding on how serious girls’s rights violations” are in Afghanistan, she said.

“It is a blatant violation of the fitting to freedom of alternative and motion, and the Taliban got the house and time [by the international community] to impose additional reprisals and systematic discrimination,” Hamidi mentioned.

Khamosh, the activist, agrees.

“The world is betraying a whole era with their silence,” she mentioned.

“It is a crime towards humanity to permit a rustic to show into a jail for half its population,” she mentioned, adding that repercussions from the continued scenario in Afghanistan will probably be felt globally.

Marzia, the professor, shared the same sense of disappointment.

“We're a rustic that has produced some of the most good ladies leaders. I used to teach my college students the value of respecting and supporting girls,” she stated.

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

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