Women like shadows, without a voice and face – this is what the new regulations introduced by the Taliban in Afghanistan are reduced to, but Afghan women will not be silenced or locked up in their homes. When Islamic radicals wanted to gag them – they started singing and they put the recordings on the Internet. This voice of protest is gaining strength, but for the Taliban women and their rights do not count. Those who dared to oppose them believe that the world will not only listen to them, but also support them.
The Taliban have banned Afghan women from speaking in public. The most courageous ones record videos singing songs they consider revolutionary and post them online. “You've made me a prisoner in my own home. For the crime of being a woman,” one of them sang.
“No force can silence us or hide us. We, women, are against inequality. All these voices will defeat you. You want to erase us, but we will win,” says Hoda Khamosh, an Afghan activist.
Not only Afghan women are protesting
More women are joining the protest, not only Afghans, and not only individually. This voice of protest will certainly be ignored by the Taliban. They are placing their hope in the international community, which will stand up for their rights. The United Nations calls the Afghan regulations a scandalous law that cannot be accepted. – The new law on “promoting virtue and preventing vice” cements a policy that completely erases the presence of women in public places, silences their voices and deprives them of individual autonomy, effectively trying to turn them into shadows without a face and voice – assesses Ravina Shamdasani from the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
Beauty salons closed in Afghanistan under Taliban rule Reuters Archive
The Taliban recently celebrated the third anniversary of taking power in Afghanistan and are consistently implementing their vision of a world without women. The Ministry of Virtue and Vice Prevention has published 35 articles that require women to cover their faces completely in public and not raise their voices. “They have made many plans over the past few years to eliminate women. They have closed our schools and universities, taken our jobs. Now that the world does not recognize them, they are putting more and more pressure on us,” says Hoda Khamosh.
Shadows without a face or voice
The regulations officially introduce prohibitions that were already in force informally. If an Afghan woman wants to travel more than 72 kilometers, she must have a guardian who is her relative. The Taliban have also banned drivers from playing music in cars, because music has been banned in general. Participation in religious ceremonies is mandatory, and men are prohibited from shaving their beards. “I feel happy because all Afghans are safe now. Afghanistan has stopped bleeding, there is peace,” says Abdul Ghani, a resident of Kabul. Afghan women have been stripped of all their rights. They can only study up to the sixth grade. They are banned from jobs where they could come into contact with men, and their ability to spend time outside their homes is limited. A range of punishments are provided for these indecent offenses, from a warning, through confiscation, to imprisonment. The regulations also provide for “any punishment that is deemed appropriate.” “The world can cut off the Taliban's money, it can isolate them, but it has to do more to make people know the truth about them,” says Hoda Khamosh. Women – trapped in an oppressive, religious regime – are doing what they can to regain their freedom.
Main image source: Private archive