The girls – who were detained in shopping centres, classes and street markets – were accused of “spreading and encouraging others to wear a bad hijab” and wearing makeup.

A 16-year old said she was arrested by the Taliban along with a number of other girls at her English language class and pulled into a police truck. She said girls who confronted the men and refused to go were beaten, while she was lashed on her feet and legs when trying to reason with them. Her father was later badly beaten for “raising immoral girls”.

  • Kwakigra@beehaw.org
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    10 months ago

    The lesson we Westerners can learn from this and some action we can take right now is not to support the establishment and proliferation of far right-wing extremist religious organizations anymore. The action we should not take is to get involved with Afganistan’s affairs and make the problem worse than we’ve already made it.

  • lisko@sopuli.xyz
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    10 months ago

    I encourage anyone who cares about this to travel to Afghanistan themselves and see it with their own eyes before relying on what publications like the Guardian have to say about it. One thing about the article that is probably not true is the claim that the girls were labeled “infidels” by the state. Why this claim is suspicious is that there is no word for “infidel” in the languages spoken in Afghanistan. The closest equivalent would be کافر (kafir), which can refer to someone who isn’t Muslim, but not wearing hijab is not considered to be any kind of proof that someone is not a Muslim. It’s highly doubtful that they were excommunicated for this.

    The guardian claims that the government in Afghanistan mandates that women must be covered “from head to toe, revealing only their eyes”, which is clearly not true. When I was in Kabul I saw many women without their faces covered. This is one clear case where the Guardian gets facts on the ground wrong. A lot of women there are wearing surgical masks as a form of face covering that also doubles as protection from pollution and disease. As the girl quoted in the article said, they are doing this as a “precaution”, in other words, the government doesn’t in fact require face covering, but they are doing it anyway because they think they have to.

    The article implies that girls were specifically targeted for going to English class, as if they have an issue with learning English. Government officials themselves also go to English classes, so that in and of itself was not a relevant matter to the story.

    As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.

    The other issue is that the rule in Afghanistan is not well developed or consolidated, which means that these men who committed these acts like the beatings and arrests were acting outside the law, and the central government doesn’t necessarily support this action. Because of the rudimentary form of government different local elements of the Taliban can act differently or independently, so what the spokesperson quoted in the article said about this being unusual was probably telling the truth. This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.

    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      You start off strong then move straight to supporting the fucking Taliban, as if that’s a reasonable position to take.

      I agree, the article is likely highly sensationalized, but let’s be clear the Taliban are a piece of shit government with extremely regressive and repressive views. Maybe this shit doesn’t happen in Kabul, but Kabul seems bad enough that women can only show their faces and most are even too afraid to do that. That shows you that it’s a TERRIBLE place to start with even in the best places. Unfortunately many people don’t live in Kabul and it seems that the government isn’t going to do anything to stop regional authorities from abusing their power and any young woman they can get their hands on.

      Don’t travel to Afghanistan. Every dollar that goes to Afghanistan supports religious oppression.

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.

      Your whole post was already getting into a questionable defense of Afghanistan’s bullshit, but then you start defending police brutality and violence against women as something that is “true in most countries”? You’ve already lost me and probably most of the community here.

    • TrumpetX@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      Sure, I’ll just travel to places to verify the source every time when I consume news. That’s reasonable!

    • TheEntity@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      So first you claim it’s all lies and didn’t happen, only to follow with “This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere”? Which one is it then?

    • tardigrada@beehaw.orgOP
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      10 months ago

      @lisko

      This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.

      Such incidents happen often in Afghanistan, and mostly against women. The central government bans girls from education, just to name another example.

      There is another article by CBS quoting representatives of the central government:

      Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban regime’s chief spokesperson, confirmed the arrests to CBS News on Monday, saying "a group of women who were involved in modeling to promote clothes were detained, advised in front of their family members […]

      The person said that after several hours of searching [for a woman detained by the Taliban], the family found the woman at a local police station late Tuesday evening, where Taliban officials demanded money, along with her passport and other documentation, as a penalty and “to guarantee that she will not violate the dress code in the future.”

      The family member said the authorities told the family they would “take her biometrics and photos, and if she violates the dress code in the future, she will be imprisoned for a longer period.”

      Recent arrests of women in Kabul Afghanistan for ‘bad hijab’, confirmed by the Taliban, regrettably signified further restrictions on women’s freedom of expression and undermines other rights," [United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan] Bennett said in a social media post.

      Source (emphasis mine)

      Addition: a few more ‘incidents’ can be found across the web, some samples are at HRW’s website on Afghanistan.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    10 months ago

    🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    Girls as young as 16 have been arrested across the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the past week for violating the Taliban’s hijab rules.

    Since taking power in Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have further restricted women’s access to education, employment and public spaces.

    Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, claimed in a voice message to the Guardian that families of the detained women had raised concerns with the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that their daughters were supported by foreign groups to promote “bad hijab”.

    The detentions happened less than a week after the UN security council requested a special envoy to engage with the Taliban, particularly over gender and women’s rights.

    Videos and photographs shared with the Guardian by another female Afghan activist, who asked not to disclose her identity, show a number of men and women demonstrating in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, with placards inviting people to a “beautiful life” by “promoting and observing proper hijab”.

    The activist, who witnessed the demonstrations, explained that these were families of detainees seeking the release of the women and aiming to prevent further arrests in the community.


    Saved 68% of original text.

  • ArugulaZ@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    “If you only knew how tired I was of you calling me that!”

    Sorry, been watching too much BTAS again.