The following is excerpted from a petition that is circulating on the Internet. Although I am well aware of the consequences of repression, I had not fully considered the psychological toll that the physical subjugation of women has taken in Afghanistan. By now, most of you here know of my thorough detestation for the Taleban. Here is yet one more reason that I wish for all of the Taleban to be rounded up and shot.
----------------Excerpt------------------
Since the Taliban took power in 1996, women have had to wear burqua and have been beaten and stoned in public for not having the proper attire, even if this means simply not having the mesh covering in front of their eyes. One woman was beaten to death by an angry mob of fundamentalists for accidentally exposing her arm while she was driving. Another was stoned to death for trying to leave the country with a man that was not a relative. Women are not allowed to work or even go out in public without a male relative; professional women such as professors, translators, doctors, lawyers, artists and writers have been forced from their jobs and restricted to their homes.
Homes where a woman is present must have their windows painted so that she can never be seen by outsiders. They must wear silent shoes so that they are neve heard. Women live in fear of their lives for the slighte misbehavior. Because they cannot work, those without male relatives or husbands are either starving to death or begging in the street, even if they hold Ph.D.'s.
Depression is becoming so widespread that it has reached emergency levels. There is no way in such an extreme Islamic society to know the suicide rate with certainty, but relief workers are estimating that the suicide rate among women must be extraordinarily high. Those who cannot find proper medication and treatment for severe depression would rather take their lives than live in such conditions. At one of the rare hospitals for women, a reporter found still, nearly lifeless bodies lying motionless on top of beds, wrapped in their burqua, unwilling to speak, eat, or do anything, but slowly wasting away. Others have gone mad and were seen crouched in corners, perpetually rocking or crying, most of them in fear.
It is at the point where the term “human rights violations” has become an understatement. Husbands have the power of life and death over their women relatives, especially their wives, but an angry mob has just as much right to stone or beat a woman, often to death, for exposing an inch of flesh or offending them in the slightest way. Women enjoyed relative freedom: to work, to dress generally as they wanted, and to drive and appear in public alone until only 1996. The rapidity of this transition is the main reason for the depression and suicide; Women who were once educators or doctors or simply used to basic human freedoms are now severely restricted and treated as subhuman in the name of right-wing fundamentalist Islam. It is not their tradition or ‘culture,’ but it is alien to them, and it is extreme even for those cultures where fundamentalism is the rule.
If you wish, email me for a copy of this petition.
As a heterosexual man who utterly adores women and the love that they share in this world, the thought of so many being utterly despondent and without hope fills me with an unquenchable rage. Once more I can only wish for the immediate and wholesale death of the Taleban. Such horrible treatment of women cannot wait until whatever dubious and uncertain afterlife for its punishment. The time is now for their recompense and I hope it is with hot American lead. I am disgusted beyond further words.