About 300 women marched in the streets of Kabul on April 15 to protest a new Afghan law that restricts their freedoms, despite facing a violent counter-demonstration, the Ottawa Citizen reported. Men shouted at the protestors, who were mostly young women, calling them “whores,” among other epithets, threw stones and smashed the tail-lights of the protestors’ bus. The Afghan police kept the mob at bay as the women marched.
Despite the hecklers, the women walked two miles to the parliament building, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal. The law was signed last month by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and has been criticized for introducing a range of restrictions on women’s rights and legalizing marital rape. The legislation was proposed by Afghanistan’s Shia community and requires, for example, that women obtain permission to work for pay or visit a doctor.
Taliban Murders Afghanistan’s Leading Women’s Rights Activist
Sitara Achakzai, one of Afghanistan’s leading women’s rights activists, was murdered earlier this week in Kandahar by Taliban gunmen, The Independent reported. Achakzai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council, was standing outside her home when two men on a motorbike shot her in broad daylight. Earlier this year, Achakzai helped organize a nationwide sit-in of more than 11,000 women, in seven provinces, to mark International Women’s Day.
Afghanistan’s police have arrested two men accused of gunning down Achakzai, but the suspects have not been identified and there are no further details about the arrests, Reuters reported.
Sandi’s Personal Editorial Note:
Sitara Achakzai a martyr. She died for the same reason as the first martyr of Islam, a woman named Sumayya bint Khayyat. Both women were killed for speaking truth to power. Apparently, Qari Yousef Ahmedi, a Taliban spokesperson, who claimed responsibility for the killing, couldn’t handle the truth. These drive-by-killers are cowards, they couldn’t even stand and look her in the face as they shot her. They are the product of the cultural misogyny known as Shar’ia. These guys stone women to death to death at will, beat and rape women with impunity. They have brought the practice of Shar’ia honor killings, which predate western civilization, to city and town near you.
Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, recently banned the use of the word “Terrorist” from the Department’s lexicon, noting that, “..when you call someone a terrorist you are using the politics of fear.” The new PC-term is “man caused disaster.” Presumably, this doesn’t make the terrorists, or the acts they commit, sound as bad. Maybe Napolitano should hope a plane over to Afghanistan and ask the “terrorized” women Sitara Achakzai represented and inspired if the kinder, gentler phasing diminishes the act of her brutal, senseless death to them. Gosh, maybe ‘man caused disasters’ are just dyslectic and can quite sort out the cultural differences12th-century from the 21st-century.
In the past few weeks, videos of women being brutalized have been widely circulated, expanding the imprint of intimidation of the Shar’ia culture to Muslim women in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Iran, persecution of women’s rights advocates has intensified in the past year. For example, Alieh Eghdamdoust, a women’s rights activist, has been jailed for three years During the past year, numerous members of groups working to change Iran’s discriminatory laws have been arrested, searched, interrogated and prevented from meeting.
I personally find it troubling that Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi have been noticeably silent about the aggregious torture and death that stalk Muslim women by a resurgent Taliban and their Shar’ia culture. Maybe its time for the three most powerful women in America to take a trip and stand up for the women who have lost their leading voice to “man caused disaster.” Maybe while they are there, they could have a chat with Hamid Karzai and ask him what’s up with the concessions for the Taliban.
What’s the worse that could happen…Oh yeah, they could get stoned.
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http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3946 Iran’s Women’s
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