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THE BELOW (updated 12 MAR 2022)
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
France 24
22 July 2022
By :
Annette Young, Yong Chim, Stephanie Cheval and Sophie Pizzementi
<<Fearing for their lives: Rescuing Afghanistan's women judges.
As August 15 marks one year since the Taliban seized power in
Afghanistan, we again report on the plight of Afghan women. Annette
Young talks to Fawzia Aminy, a Supreme Court judge who managed to escape
to Britain via Greece within weeks of Kabul falling, and to the woman
who helped facilitate her rescue, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, the
director of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute.
The two are seeking to help those women left behind. Our team also meets
a young woman entrepreneur in Kabul struggling to keep her business
alive under the Taliban. The 51 Percent is taking a break over the
European summer and will return early September.>>
Source:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-51/20220722-fearing-for-their-lives-rescuing-afghanistan-s-women-judges
Embedded is a 13.26 min. video
The Guardian
21 July 2022
By Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul
<<Taliban presiding over extensive rights abuses in Afghanistan, says UN.
Taliban authorities have presided over widespread human rights abuses
since they took control of Afghanistan last August, the UN said,
including 160 killings of former government officials and members of the
security forces, and dozens of cases of torture, arbitrary arrests and
inhumane punishments. A UN report, released on the day an Australian
journalist said she had been detained in Kabul and forced to tweet a
retraction of her reporting, also detailed a broad assault on the press.
In total 173 media workers were affected by abuses including detention,
threats, ill-treatment and assault. <[The United Nations] has documented
persistent allegations of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and
detentions, and torture and ill-treatment carried out by the de facto
authorities,> the report, titled Human Rights in Afghanistan, found.
<De facto authorities> refers to the Taliban government that has not
been recognised by any member of the international community nearly a
year after taking control. The UN said it was <concerned about the
impunity> with which Taliban members appear to have carried out human
rights violations. A sweeping crackdown on critics, targeting media,
protesters and civil society activists has exacerbated the problem. <The
human rights situation has been compounded by the measures taken by the
de facto authorities to stifle debate, curb dissent and limit the
fundamental rights and freedoms of Afghans,> the report said. Although
civilian casualties fell sharply when the Taliban took control of
Afghanistan and fighting has stopped in most of the country, the new
government was not able to guarantee security for its citizens,
particularly religious and ethnic minorities.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/taliban-overseeing-extensive-rights-abuses-afghanistan-says-un
The Guardian
18 July 2022
Supported by
guardian.org
By Zuhal Ahab
<<Send us a man to do your job so we can sack you, Taliban tell female
officials
As economy collapses, women from Afghanistan's finance ministry say they
have been asked to suggest male relatives to replace them. The Taliban
have asked women working at Afghanistan's finance ministry to send a
male relative to do their job a year after female public-sector workers
were barred from government work and told to stay at home.
Women who worked in government positions were sent home from their jobs
shortly after the Taliban took power in August 2021, and have been paid
heavily reduced salaries to do nothing. But several women told the
Guardian they had received similar calls from Taliban officials
requesting they recommend male relatives in their place, because the
<workload in the office has increased and they need to hire a man
instead of us>, according to one woman who did not wish her identity to
be revealed. Sima Bahous, executive director of UN Women, said in May:
<Current restrictions on women's employment have been estimated to
result in an immediate economic loss of up to $1bn – or up to 5% of
Afghanistan’s GDP. <There is almost universal poverty in the country,>
she added. <An entire generation is threatened by food insecurity and
malnutrition.> Maryam*, 37, received a call from the HR department of
the Afghan ministry of finance, where she had worked for more than 15
years. She said: <I was asked to introduce a male family member to
replace me at the ministry, so I could be dismissed from the job.> Her
voice quivering with frustration, Maryam, who holds a master's degree in
business management, said she had worked her way up over 15 years within
the ministry to head of the department. <How can I easily introduce
someone else to replace me?> she asked. <Would he be able to work as
efficiently as I have for so many years. This is a difficult and
technical position I was trained for and have years of experience in.
And even if he could do the same work eventually, what would happen to
me? Since they came [to power], the Taliban have demoted me, and reduced
my salary from 60,000 Afghanis [£575] to AFN12,000. I cannot even afford
my son’s school fees. When I questioned this, an official rudely told me
to get out of his office and said that my demotion was not negotiable.>
Several attempts by the Guardian to seek a response and clarification
from Taliban officials at the ministry went unanswered. It is not clear
if women from other state departments have also been asked to send male
relatives to do their job. However, Maryam said she was aware of at
least 60 female colleagues from the finance department who had received
similar calls.
<The Taliban have a history of eliminating women, so hearing this is not
surprising or new,> said Sahar Fetrat, assistant researcher with the
women's rights division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has
documented extensively the Taliban’s atrocities against women since they
took over Afghanistan.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/18/send-us-a-man-to-do-your-job-so-we-can-sack-you-taliban-tell-female-officials
Al Jazeera
6 July 2022
From The Stream
<<How are women faring as Afghanistan’s problems deepen?
The future for women and girls in Afghanistan remains uncertain after a
Taliban-convened grand assembly of religious elders ended without any
changes to a ban on girls attending high school.
More than 3,500 clerics and scholars joined the <Loya Jirga> that began
on June 30 and concluded with an endorsement of the Taliban government.
But women were not allowed to join the three-day meeting as
representatives, despite activists' appeals to allow women to speak
frankly about challenges facing women and girls.
Afghan women in recent months have urged the Taliban to reverse
successive restrictions on their movements, dress, and employment. An
internationally-condemned ban on girls attending high school remains in
place, more than three months after the Taliban administration abruptly
ordered female students home as they prepared to return to class. Human
rights advocates are now concerned that Taliban-imposed rules on women's
access to healthcare could affect women and girls in urgent need of care
in the wake of a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan on June 22.
As women across Afghanistan endure the Taliban-imposed constraints and
minority communities also fear for their future, families across the
country are shouldering the impact of an ever-worsening economic
emergency. The vast majority of international funding was quickly shut
off in the wake of the Taliban's rise to power and the rapid exit of US
and coalition forces in August 2021, pushing millions of Afghan families
into debt and leaving them on the brink of hunger.>>
Read more here and an embedded an Al Jazeera video to watch:
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2022/7/6/how-are-women-faring-as-afghanistans-problems-deepen
The Guardian
3 July 2022
By Emma Graham-Harrison
<<Meeting of Afghan clerics ends with silence on education for girls.
A gathering of thousands of Afghan clerics and elders has ended with a
call for international recognition, but silence on the country's ban on
secondary education for girls. Nearly a year since their surprise
military triumph across Afghanistan, not a single country has officially
recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government.
Diplomats say the ban on girls' education is one of the main reasons the
Taliban are still international outcasts. It is resented by many in the
movement's ranks, who want their own daughters to be educated. Classes
were set to restart in March, until a last-minute reversal, apparently
on the orders of hardliners close to the supreme leader of the movement,
Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada. The all-male group of religious and
community leaders spent three days discussing the future of the country,
largely united under Taliban rule after decades of civil war. There had
been hope they might offer political incentives or cover for the Taliban
leadership to reverse course on the ban. But only two out of more than
4,500 participants called for the reopening of secondary schools for
girls, Afghanistan's Tolo television channel reported. And in their
final communique, the clerics made only passing reference to the need
for <religious and modern education> and to respect <the rights of
women>. It did not clarify if those rights include schooling. <It’s hard
to get too excited about vague references to education and women's
rights at the end of the Taliban’s big meeting when the Taliban
previously made a very clear promise to reopen all schools only to break
that promise,> said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at
Human Rights Watch. <Donors, diplomats and the UN need to act as though
this ban is likely permanent … It's far past time for the international
community to respond to their gender apartheid in ways more tangible
than statements of deep concern.> >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/03/meeting-of-afghan-clerics-ends-with-silence-on-education-for-girls
Al Jazeera
29 June 2022
By Ruchi Kumar
<<Afghan officials fled to luxury homes leaving millions to suffer.
In the past few weeks multiple reports have emerged of Afghan elites and
several former officials from the West-backed Kabul government escaping
to luxury condos in Dubai and beachside villas in California during the
Taliban takeover of the country last August.
But tens of thousands of Afghans, who also left the country, still
languish in cramped refugee camps across the world, while back home,
millions of others face hunger. Last week, more than 1,000 people were
killed and 10,000 homes were destroyed after a powerful earthquake
struck southeastern Afghanistan. Former Afghan officials, including
aides of former President Ashraf Ghani, spent millions to buy properties
in Dubai and the US during the last years of the West-backed government,
according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. A US watchdog
said earlier this month that millions of dollars disappeared from the
presidential palace and the National Directorate of Security during the
Taliban takeover last August. The money remains unaccounted for, though
Ghani unlikely fled with millions of cash, according to the watchdog.
The former president moved to the world-renowned five-star St Regis
hotel in Abu Dhabi after leaving Afghanistan. He now lives in the UAE.
Tens of thousands of Afghans, who worked for the US and NATO forces,
were airlifted as the US forces were withdrawing from the country after
20 years of war, but many of them are stuck in refugee processing
centres across the world with an uncertain future.
Corruption and misappropriation of funds
The reports of corruption within the Afghan government and
misappropriation of funds in the largely aid-dependent country put the
spotlight on how Afghans – both refugees as well as those in the country
– have been failed by their leadership. <I gave the best years of my
life to rebuilding this country, to educating the next generation of
thinkers. And now here I am, vulnerable and unable to even support my
own family, while those who did nothing for the country live comfortable
lives,> said Mina, a university professor who wished to be identified by
one name. Her work has been severely affected owing to growing Taliban
restrictions on women. Many of her classes have been cancelled, she has
not been paid in months, and she often faces harassment from Taliban
guards for going out without a mahram (male escort). Afghan girls still
are barred from attending high schools and women are increasingly being
excluded from public life, bringing back the memory of the last Taliban
regime of the 1990s. The Taliban has struggled to revive the
war-battered economy after the West slapped sanctions, with the US
freezing the Afghan central bank funds worth nearly $10bn following the
withdrawal of US-led forces. The financial crisis in the country has
trickled into her household, and as her family's sole breadwinner, Mina
has been struggling to make ends meet on a significantly reduced and
intermittent salary, with rising prices. In the last 10 months, she was
only paid twice and it was less than half of what she was owed. <A year
ago, cooking oil was 50 Afs [$.56] per kilo, and today it is over 150
Afs [$1.69]. A bag of flour was 1600 Afs [$18], but now it is over 4000
Afs [$45]. I haven’t been paid in months and have been borrowing money
to feed my family (her parents and her younger sister). But even people
won’t lend me any more,> she said, adding that on most days, they divide
any meals they can acquire into two or more parts so that they have
something to eat later. <We are starving and I feel extremely hopeless,
especially when I see that those who left us in this situation are
living comfortable lives,> Mina, who is based in Afghanistan, told Al
Jazeera.
Struggling to survive
Meanwhile, Afghans forced in exile and struggling to survive watch
painfully as corrupt former officials escape accountability.>>
Read more here:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/29/afghan-officials-escaped-to-luxury-con
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