AFGHANISTAN: Women in the western Afghan city of Herat are often arrested, taken to hospital and subject to abusive gynaecological examinations just for walking in the street with a man or riding in a taxi without another passenger, Human Rights Watch reported yesterday.
In Herat, every woman has to wear the burqa while TV stations substitute pictures of flowers during foreign programmes when women appear with any hair uncovered. After conducting more than 100 interviews between September and November in Herat and Kabul, the watchdog shows how little life has changed for women in Herat under the hardline governor, Ismail Khan.
Although particularly bad in Herat, the reports says similar abuses are found all over Afghanistan. In the capital, Kabul, the Taliban's Vice and Virtue squad has been reconfigured under the name "Islamic Teaching" and harasses women for wearing make-up.
Elsewhere, the troops of rival warlords with close military ties with US and other foreign forces have committed gang rapes. The abuses are not confined to Pashtun areas where the Taliban was strong.
Troops loyal to Gen Mohammed Fahim, a senior Northern Alliance commander and the central government's defence minister, "have been enforcing Taliban-era 'moral' restrictions" such as "forbidding families from playing music at weddings and dancing, and in some cases arresting and beating musicians", Human Rights Watch says.
"Many people outside the country believe that Afghan women and girls have had their rights restored. It's just not true," says Zama Coursen-Neff, co-author of the report. A doctor at Herat's only hospital said police bring in about 10 girls and women a day for "chastity" tests.
- (Guardian Service)