Friday, May 07, 2010

Take Your Pick - Public Beating or Get Stuffed Into a Bag with a Cat - Women's Rights in our ally, Afghanistan

Is this a country worth dying for? The UN Humanitarian Affairs news service, IRIN, has released a look into the state of women's rights in Afghanistan today - eight years after we liberated the country for the benefit of warlords and druglords:

...In January domestic violence forced two young women to flee their homes in Oshaan village, Dolaina District, Ghor Province, southwestern Afghanistan. A week later they were arrested in neighbouring Herat Province and sent back to Oshaan, according to the governor of Ghor, Mohammad Iqbal Munib.

"One woman was beaten in public for the elopement [i.e. escaping spousal abuse] and the second was reportedly confined in a sack with a cat," Munib told IRIN.


According to the governor, the illegal capture of the women was orchestrated by Fazul Ahad who leads an illegal armed militia group in Dolaina District. Locals say Ahad, a powerful figure who backed President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections, has been running Oshaan as his personal fiefdom

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..."I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws," Zarmina, 28, told IRIN. She, along with over a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, is in Herat's burns hospital.

Over 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died, doctors said.


"People call it the 'hospital of cries' as patients here cry out loudly in pain," Arif Jalali, head of the hospital, told IRIN.


Gee, if we can't find Taliban to shoot, it sounds like there are plenty of other deserving targets over there.

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