| |
CLICK HERE ON HOW TO READ
THE BELOW
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
31-18 Jan 2022
= below
17-08 Jan 2022
07 jan 2022-29 Dec 2021
Click here for an overview of 2021
The Guardian
27 Jan 2022
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor
<<West plans to tie Afghan teacher aid to girls’
education pledge.
The west is planning to incentivise the Taliban to abide
by their promise to allow girls to be educated by
providing funding for teachers’ salaries only in
provinces in which the pledge is met.
The Taliban claimed this week the group would allow
girls of secondary school age to be educated from March,
the start of the next school term. Sceptical diplomats
said they would need more than verbal assurances, with
physical and budgetary evidence of preparations being
required. If no credible nationwide pledge was made or
implemented, western diplomats said a plan to fund
teachers’ salaries would go ahead only in those
provinces where girls were allowed to attend school.
Some provinces have been less repressive about the
rights of women. The salary funds would come from the
World Bank-administered Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund
(ARTF), the single largest source of aid to Afghanistan
before the Taliban took over in August. Worth £1.5bn,
the fund has been frozen since then. Next month, the
World Bank executive board is likely to discuss how more
cash can be released from the fund, not just to help
with humanitarian work but, for the first time since
August, with the payment of key workers in health and
education.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/27/west-plans-to-tie-afghan-teacher-aid-to-girls-education-pledge
Al Jazeera
By Arwa Ibrahim and Mohsin Khan Momand
26 Jan 2022
<<In Afghanistan, Taliban diktat sparks debate about
women’s attire. Some Afghan women have protested the
imposition of a dress code while others say the Taliban
should focus on more pressing issues. Kabul, Afghanistan
– Many Afghan women in the capital Kabul have protested
against a poster campaign launched by the Taliban,
encouraging women to wear a burqa or hijab. The Afghan
Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of
Vice plastered posters across Kabul’s cafés and shops
earlier this month to encourage the wearing of the burqa,
a full-body veil that also covers the face. It did not
issue an official directive. “According to Sharia law, a
Muslim woman must observe the hijab,” wrote the posters,
along with pictures of blue burqa-clad women and others
in full black. The word <hijab> accompanied each picture
as if to clarify what that should look like. Many Muslim
women around the world choose to wear the headscarf – in
a variety of styles – as an expression of their faith
and part of their cultural identity.
Afghan women have traditionally worn the burqa – mostly
sold in shades of blue, white and grey – but the black
robes are less common across the country. The Taliban,
which returned to power in August, has clarified that
the dress code is not mandatory, but insists women
should cover their bodies as required by their Islamic
faith. During their last stint in power between 1996 and
2001, the wearing of the burqa was strictly enforced.
Today, the streets of downtown Kabul are filled with
women wearing various styles of the veil. While some
dress in burqas that cover their faces, others wear
headscarves and an array of mixed traditional and
western fashion.
Many Afghan women don’t see what the fuss is about –
because the headscarf is already part of many Afghan
women’s daily attire – while others condemned it as an
infringement on their freedoms.
<As Afghan women, we know our religious rights and
obligations,> said Jamila Afghani, a women’s rights
activist and former deputy minister of labour and social
affairs. <It should be a woman’s choice to wear what she
wants,> said Afghani, who also heads the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in
Afghanistan. To Afghani, the campaign also shows a
Taliban obsession with unimportant matters in the midst
of a deepening economic crisis that has left many
families unable to feed their children. <They should be
busy working on more important things than women’s
outfits,> said Afghani. <Most women already wear a
traditional chador [shawl or headscarf], so why is this
even being raised.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/26/holdafghan-women-denounce-talibans-burqa-campaign
The Guardian
23 Jan 2022
Rights and freedom is supported by
Humanity United
By M. Mursal and Zahra Nader
<<‘I’ve already sold my daughters; now, my kidney’:
winter in Afghanistan’s slums. Crushing poverty is
forcing starving displaced people to make desperate
choices.
The temperature is dropping to below zero in western
Afghanistan and Delaram Rahmati is struggling to find
food for her eight children. Since leaving the family
home in the country’s Badghis province four years ago,
the Rahmatis have been living in a mud hut with a
plastic roof in one of Herat city’s slums. Drought made
their village unliveable and the land unworkable. Like
an estimated 3.5 million Afghans who have been forced to
leave their homes, the Rahmatis now live in a
neighbourhood for internally displaced people (IDP).
There are no jobs. But the 50-year-old has hospital fees
to pay for two of her sons, one of whom is paralysed and
the other who has mental illness, as well as medicine
for her husband. <I was forced to sell two of my
daughters, an eight- and six-year-old,> she says.
Rahmati says she sold her daughters a few months ago for
100,000 afghani each (roughly £700), to families she
doesn’t know. Her daughters will stay with her until
they reach puberty and then be handed over to strangers.
It is not uncommon in Afghanistan to arrange the sale of
a daughter into a future marriage but raise her at home
until it is time for her to leave. However, as the
country’s economic crisis deepens, families are
reporting that they are handing children over at an
increasingly young age because they cannot afford to
feed them. Yet, selling her daughters’ future was not
the only agonising decision Rahmati was forced to make.
“Because of debt and hunger I was forced to sell my
kidney,” she tells Rukhshana Media from outside her home
in the Herat slum. Afghanistan is on the brink of <a
humanitarian crisis and economic collapse>, according to
the UN. The agency’s ambassador to Afghanistan has said
it is <experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis of its
contemporary history>. Drought, Covid-19 and the
economic sanctions imposed after the Taliban seized
power in August 2021 have had catastrophic consequences
on the economy. Dramatic rises in inflation have
resulted in soaring food prices. The kidney trade has
been growing in Afghanistan for some time. But since the
Taliban took power, the price and conditions under which
the illegal organ trade takes place has changed. The
price of a kidney, which once ranged from $3,500 to
$4,000 (£2,600 to £3,000), has dropped to less than
$1,500 (£1,100). But the number of volunteers keeps
rising. Rahmati sold her right kidney for 150,000
afghani (£1,000). But her recovery from the operation
has not been good and now, like her husband, she is also
sick, with no money left to visit a doctor. More than
half of the country’s estimated 40 million population
face <extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of
them are at risk of famine>, according to the UN refugee
agency, UNHCR. For a growing number of Afghans, selling
a kidney is their only way to get money to eat. <It has
been months since we last ate rice. We hardly find bread
and tea. Three nights a week, we can’t afford to eat
dinner,> says Salahuddin Taheri, who lives in the same
slum as the Rahmati family. Taheri, a 27-year-old father
of four, who scrapes together enough money for five
loaves of bread each day by collecting and selling
recycled rubbish, is looking for a buyer for his kidney.
<I have been asking private hospitals in Herat for many
days if they need any kidney. I even told them if they
need it urgently, I can sell it below the market price,
but I haven’t heard back,> Taheri says. <I need to feed
my children, I have no other choice.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/23/ive-already-sold-my-daughters-now-my-kidney-winter-in-afghanistans-slums
Al Jazeera
23 Jan 2022
<<Taliban delegation begins talks in Oslo
Al Jazeera has learned that the Afghan group will be
pushed on women’s rights in return for access to frozen
funds.
A Taliban delegation led by acting Foreign Minister Amir
Khan Muttaqi has started three days of talks in Oslo
with Western government officials and Afghan civil
society representatives. Starting on Sunday, the
closed-door meetings in the Norwegian capital will see
Taliban representatives meeting with women’s rights
activists and human rights defenders from Afghanistan
and from the Afghan diaspora. The delegation will be
pushed on promises to uphold human rights in return for
access to billions of dollars in frozen humanitarian aid,
Al Jazeera has learned. <The leverage the West has on
the Taliban is nearly $10bn of Afghan money that is held
predominantly in the United States,> Al Jazeera’s Osama
Bin Javaid, reporting from Doha, said.<Amir Khan Muttaqi
is going to be trying to get some of that money back to
pay civil servants’ salaries and to make sure that there
is enough food in the country because the humanitarian
situation has been getting quite desperate,> he said.
<The other aspect of this obviously is the promises that
the Taliban has made when it came to power on women’s
rights, girls education, civil liberties, and that is
something the Taliban has yet to deliver,> he added.
Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer at the American University
of Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera from the Afghan capital
Kabul that just getting the Taliban to sit down and talk
is progress. <The reality is that the Taliban is new to
the governance and there is an opportunity to mould them
into something better,> he said. <I know they have been
rigid in some aspects, but with the right amount of
international pressure and the right kind of activism
within Afghanistan, the Taliban can be pushed towards
specific actions.> In their first visit to Europe since
returning to power in August, the Taliban will meet
Norwegian officials as well as representatives of the US,
France, the UK, Germany, Italy and the European Union.
<In Norway, we have a meeting with the US and also with
the European Union on matters of mutual interest. And
one part of our meetings would be with our Afghan
diaspora who are outside the country, especially in
Europe,> said Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman.
<Their ideas, consultations and plans will be heard.
This means that meetings for mutual understanding will
continue between Afghans.> Speaking to Al Jazeera from
Turkey’s Istanbul, Mariam Atahi, an Afghan journalist
and women’s rights activist, urged the Taliban to
release three women she said had been abducted by the
group while protesting for their right to education.
<If they want to have the recognition, if they want to
govern Afghanistan, they have to recognise the human
rights, the rights to education, the rights to political
participation,> she said. Taliban officials, however,
have denied beating and arresting women’s rights
activists.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/23/taliban-delegation-arrives-in-norway-for-first-talks-with-west
The Guardian
Agence France-Presse in Oslo
21 Jan 2022
<<Taliban delegation travel to Norway for human rights talks
Oslo meeting with Afghan rulers will include allies and ‘not represent
legitimisation or recognition’.
A Taliban delegation is to hold talks with Norwegian officials and
Afghan civil society representatives in Oslo next week, the Norwegian
foreign ministry has said. The visit is scheduled from Sunday to Tuesday,
and <the Taliban will meet representatives of the Norwegian authorities
and officials from a number of allied countries>, for talks on the
humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and human rights, the ministry
said. Stressing that Norway would be <clear about our expectations,>
particularly on <girls’ education and human rights,> foreign minister
Anniken Huitfeldt said the meetings would <not represent a
legitimisation or recognition of the Taliban>.
The ministry did not specify which allies would attend, but Norwegian
newspaper VG said they would include Britain, the European Union, France,
Germany, Italy and the United States.
<We are extremely concerned about the grave situation in Afghanistan,
where millions of people are facing a full-blown humanitarian disaster,>
Huitfeldt said. <In order to be able to help the civilian population in
Afghanistan, it is essential that both the international community and
Afghans from various parts of society engage in dialogue with the
Taliban,> Huitfeldt added. <We must talk to the de facto authorities in
the country. We cannot allow the political situation to lead to an even
worse humanitarian disaster,> Huitfeldt said. >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/21/taliban-delegation-travel-to-norway-for-human-rights-talks
CNN World
1 Nov 2021
She was sold to a stranger so her family could eat as Afghanistan
crumbles.
By Anna Coren, Jessie Yeung and Abdul Basir Bina, CNN
<<(CNN)Parwana Malik, a 9-year-old girl with dark eyes and rosy cheeks,
giggles with her friends as they play jump rope in a dusty clearing. But
Parwana's laughter disappears as she returns home, a small hut with dirt
walls, where she's reminded of her fate: she's being sold to a stranger
as a child bride. The man who wants to buy Parwana says he's 55, but to
her, he's <an old man> with white eyebrows and a thick white beard, she
told CNN on October 22. She worries he will beat her and force her to
work in his house. But her parents say they have no choice. For four
years, her family have lived in an Afghan displacement camp in
northwestern Badghis province, surviving on humanitarian aid and menial
work earning a few dollars a day. But life has only gotten harder since
the Taliban took power in Afghanistan on August 15. As international aid
dries up and the country's economy collapses, they're unable to afford
basic necessities like food. Her father already sold her 12-year-old
sister several months ago. Parwana is one of many young Afghan girls
sold into marriage as the country's humanitarian crisis deepens. Hunger
has pushed some families to make heartbreaking decisions, especially as
the brutal winter approaches. The parents gave CNN full access and
permission to speak to the children and show their faces, because they
say they cannot change the practice themselves.
<Day by day, the numbers are increasing of families selling their
children,> said Mohammad Naiem Nazem, a human rights activist in Badghis.
<Lack of food, lack of work, the families feel they have to do this.> >>
Read more here:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/asia/afghanistan-child-marriage-crisis-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html
Opinion by Gino d'Artali: <My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.> Gianna
d'Artali.
And she was always right! Also, international aid to the poor is
immensely lacking which is a political decision but mothers and children
are no chess or poker toys!
The Guardian
20 Jan 2022
<<Afghanistan: the left behind
Interview
‘The Taliban hate us’: a former senior female police officer
As told to Emma Graham-Harrison and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii.
*Fahima was the most senior policewoman in her province. Since the
Taliban took over, women who worked in the police force have been
targeted for assassination and beatings. She believes Taliban officials
are particularly focused on tracking her down because of both her
seniority and her role recruiting other women. I fled to another city
just two days after the country fell to the Taliban, because I knew they
were looking for me in my home province. They found my address, and have
been to my house and asked my family about me. I was getting threats
over the phone, too – the very first night I got calls. They rang me up,
and I told them I had left our province but they said: <You’re lying,
come and hand yourself over, give us your cars and guns. We know you
have corrupted so many women in Afghanistan.> It took a long time to
travel here. I was in minibuses, wearing a burqa to cover my face so
they wouldn’t recognise me. There were several dozen women in the police
– nobody is working now, they have all been told to just stay in their
homes. Many went to Iran, some came to other cities like me, some are
still living in our province. But I was a a senior police officer in the
province, that’s why there are so many threats directed at me. They are
looking for me because I was senior, and responsible for recruiting
women, I worked in the police for 10 years and there were no women more
senior than me in the province. They hate us and say we are not Muslim,
because we got a salary from foreigners [western funds supported the
security forces including for salaries] and we worked alongside men.
They hate us more than other women. I don’t even tell my neighbours here
that I was a policewoman before. When the Taliban talk about an amnesty
they are lying, they didn’t fulfil those promises. Just a few minutes
ago, some neighbours called to warn me they are coming every day to the
house [where I used to live] and ask where I am. Even here I am moving
from one place to another, changing where I stay every couple of nights.
If they get me the only way I will be able to get out of their prison is
death.>>
*The name has been changed for this article.
Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/20/the-taliban-hate-us-a-former-senior-female-police-officer
The Guardian
20 Jan 2022
<<Afghanistan: the left behind
Interview
‘I am losing my skills’: female boxer who was on Afghan national team.
As told to Emma Graham-Harrison and Akhtar Mohammad Makoii
*Mariam and her sister were on the national boxing team and the youth
boxing team. They were ordered by the Taliban to stop practising, and
are frightened they may be targeted in future. The interview was
interrupted by a hail of gunshots near the place they are staying. About
two weeks after they took Kabul, the Taliban sent two gunmen to our
doorstep. They told us: <Forget your dreams. The Islamic emirate is here
now, you should stop boxing, and not go to the stadium.> I had been a
member of the Afghan national boxing team when the Taliban arrived. It
took me three years to make the team, my family and friends had
supported me a lot, and I had done a lot of training before I was
finally able to do it. My sister had been part of the youth team for
several months. In August, me and my sister and the other team members
went to the Olympic headquarters to prepare for a match, and the guards
from the previous government took our identity cards to register us. We
went to pick them up some days later, and we think some of the Taliban
who were there followed us home. The next day, at around 3.30pm, some of
them came to our house and asked for the girls who did boxing. We said
we didn’t know what they were talking about, and had nothing to do with
any sports. But they said: <We saw you at the stadium.> Then they told
us to stop boxing. It was a very bad day, one that I will never forget.
They were very brutal, and said: <How can you go to a stadium full of
men and let them watch you exercising? As a woman, why are you even
taking part in sports?> My brother is also a boxer, but the threats were
only for me and my sister. We had already got a threat letter from the
Taliban and we were scared they might come looking for us again, so we
left our house and moved to a rented room. Things are difficult for us
women who are involved in sport, we haven’t been able to go out at all.
Two women boxers were beaten up by the Taliban in the street. My parents
are now in danger because of our sports – we are afraid they will come
back for us. I am sure that while the Islamic emirate is here, we will
not be able to box, even if they do not kill us. If I could leave, I
could continue with boxing, and my sister could continue her education.
She is a teenager and high school is closed for girls.
I really feel sad now, because I don’t have the boxing club, or money
for expenses to practise on my own. I am am losing my skills. I
originally started training as a runner, then I saw women doing boxing
and there were only a few. I decided to get involved and helped inspire
others. When the Taliban came, about 100 women were doing boxing. Please
become our voice and tell the people of the world about our situation.
Our lives are in danger because of our sport.>>
*The name has been changed for this article.
Source: The Guardian :
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/20/i-am-losing-my-skills-female-boxer-who-was-on-afghan-national-team
Al Jazeera
19 Jan 2022
<<Taliban arrests fighter who shot dead Hazara woman at checkpoint. The
Taliban says the fighter will be punished for ‘mistakenly’ killing
25-year-old Zainab Abdullahi, which has caused a public outcry.
A Taliban fighter has been arrested for shooting dead a Hazara woman at
a checkpoint in the Afghan capital as she returned from a wedding, a
spokesman for the group says. The killing of Zainab Abdullahi, 25, has
horrified women, who face increasing restrictions since the Taliban
returned to power in August. The shooting took place in a Kabul
neighbourhood inhabited mostly by members of the minority Shia Hazara
community, which has been the target of deadly attacks by sectarian
armed groups such as ISIL (ISIS).
Abdullahi was <killed by mistake>, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem said
on Twitter, adding that the arrested fighter will be punished. Her
family has been offered 600,000 Afghani (about $5,700) for the January
13 shooting in the capital’s Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood, the interior
ministry said separately. Some women’s rights activists have staged
protests in Kabul since Abdullahi’s killing, demanding justice. <When we
heard of Zainab’s murder we got afraid. We are scared that if we leave
our homes we might not return alive,> said a women’s rights activist who
asked not to be named for her own safety. <At nights we can not go out
and even during the days we don’t go out unless there is something
urgent,> she said, adding that passing through checkpoints was risky for
women. The Taliban are increasingly imposing restrictions on women, who
are being squeezed out of public life. Most secondary schools for girls
are shut, while women are barred from all but essential government work.
They have also been ordered not to travel long distances unless
accompanied by a close male relative. Earlier this month, the Taliban’s
religious police put up posters around the capital ordering women to
cover up. A spokesman for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and
Prevention of Vice said it was <just encouragement for Muslim women to
follow Sharia law>.
On Tuesday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Michelle Bachelet, urged the Security Council to <hold to account> those
guilty of abuses in Afghanistan. She said denying women and girls their
fundamental rights was <massively damaging> a country already facing a
humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/19/taliban-arrest-fighter-who-shot-dead-hazara-woman-at-checkpoint
The Guardian
18 Jan 2022
<<Afghanistan: the left behind
Interview
‘Gunmen were looking for my mum’: daughter of Afghan ex-radio boss
As told to Emma Graham-Harrison
Farkhunda’s* mother has run a feminist radio station in her conservative
province for the best part of 20 years, in defiance of Taliban threats.
She has three children with disabilities who were forced to abandon
their wheelchairs when gunmen attacked their home about two months after
the Taliban takeover. They are in hiding in a city safe house, but don’t
know how they will survive longer term. When the fighting closed in on
our city in August we were moving around – one night in one place, one
night in another place – staying with different relatives because my mum
had received a lot of threats in the past. She had faced some
discrimination, as an ethnic minority in our region, and also the
Taliban used to ask her: <Why are you, a woman, running a radio station.
You should stay home and look after your family.>
When we left our home, we took nothing with us – my sister and brothers
are disabled and they can’t walk. But eventually our relatives told us
that even though the Taliban are in power, everything is normal and we
can come back to our home. So in October, we returned to the house after
two months living with different uncles and aunts. That same evening,
late at night when we were all sleeping, suddenly we heard gunshots all
around the doors. We all gathered in one room in the centre of the house
that didn’t have windows, so we were able to survive. In the other rooms
the windows were shot as well as the doors, there was glass all around,
but they didn’t try to come in – perhaps they thought they hit us
already. We wanted to leave when the shooting stopped, but it was too
late. The next morning our neighbours came and said: <Why did you come
back? You should leave immediately.> They thought it was insecure
because we had come back and that our family was the reason why there
was gunfire at night. We left in such a hurry that we couldn’t even take
the wheelchairs – we had to carry my brothers and sisters. They are
grown now. My twin brothers are 19 years old, and my sister is 18, so
they are heavy. About a week later, the neighbours called and said some
gunmen were looking for my mum, so she went to a rural district and all
of us split up. My dad went to one place, my brothers went to an aunt,
and I took my sister to a cousin’s house. After another month we were
reunited in a big city, where we are staying in a safe house, but things
are really hard. We were not able to go back for the wheelchairs, and we
could only take a couple of changes of clothes, nothing else. We don’t
have money to buy anything so we are just living in a bare room with
carpets on the floor. We are worried about our relatives at home being
in danger because of my mum’s work.
My mother has turned off her phone now, but she was getting Taliban
threat messages saying things like: <We told you for years to leave your
job but you didn’t, now you have nowhere to hide.> And one saying: <We
will come and kill you and burn your radio station.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/18/gunmen-were-looking-for-my-mum-daughter-of-afghan-ex-radio-boss
|
