An example:

"The ministry of vice and virtue is the most misogynist department in the whole world"


News Network International, September 13, 1999


ISLAMABAD (NNI): The UN Special Rapporteur for Violence against Women Radhika Coomaraswami Sunday lashed out at the ruling Taliban for systematic violation of the human rights of women.

"We found widespread systematic violation of the human rights of women in the Taliban areas of Afghanistan," Coomaraswami told a news conference on return from a 4-day visit to Afghanistan.

She said public beating of women, by a leather cricket bat continues in Afghanistan, which is mainly for the violations of edicts by the department of virtue and vice. The UN rapporteur urged the Taliban authorities to respect international conventions on human rights and dismantle Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

"We found violations in the areas of physical security, the right to education the right to health the right to employment of movement freedom of association, protection of the rights of women, protection of the family and trafficking and prostitution," she said. Public lashing of women on Fridays for violations of the Hadood Ordinance also continue, she said.

She said because of war and poverty many of the women cannot work, level of begging by women is extremely high and "we did find that prostitution does exist in Kabul and that many people told us that it was on the increase".

Coomarswami said the freedom of movement of women is extremely restricted. "There are allegedly no passports for women in Afghanistan. But we still have not confirmed it. There seems to be a fact that women cannot go out without a Mahram".

The Taliban's ministry of vice and virtue has authored edicts that ban women from working, going to school, forces them to wear the all-econompassing burqa, ordered people to paint their first floor windows black so passers by could not see women inside.

Sje said the ministry issued edicts saying women should travel outside their home only when accompanied by a close male relative. She said violators are publicly beaten, sometimes with a car antennae ripped off the nearest vehicle.

"The ministry of vice and virtue is the most misogynist department in the whole world their edicts are quite unacceptable," Coomaraswamy said. She interviewed scores of Afghan women, both in Afghanistan and - - neighboring Pakistan, where tens of thousands live as refugees.

She said discrimination against women exists throughout the world but in Afghanistan it is the official policy of the Taliban. The ruling militia has imposed their own interpretation of Islamic laws.

She said also visited the areas controlled by the opposition United Front led by Burhanuddin Rabbani adding she was shown girls school and was told of the opposition's support for women.

However, she said "for the record" Rabbani's government ruled Afghanistan from 1992 until 1996 when bitter factional fighting destroyed 70 percent of the city and "some of the worst violence against women in a war" was committed.

She said women's begging is on the increase in capital Kabul adding that depression among women is rampant. There were reports of trafficking in women, forced marriages and prostitution. She said women were separated from their husbands and relocated to camps from the Shomali Plains. There also were reports of sexual assaults, which should be investigated.

She said that she has never seen the people's suffering as much as in Afghanistan. "The situation looks very bleak in terms of poverty, in terms of war, in terms of the rights of women."



Jeesh where have I read that before, albiet fiction.

Edited by: XSha Tell  at: 9/17/01 2:27:02 pm