The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 73/No. 17      May 4, 2009

 
Afghan women protest law
that subjugates them to men
 
BY SETH GALINSKY  
Two hundred people, mostly young women and some men, marched through Afghanistan’s capital April 15 in support of women’s rights. The protest in Kabul was in opposition to a new law that says women must agree to have sex with their husbands at least once every four days.

“I am concerned about my future with this law,” said 14-year-old Masuma Hasani, who joined the protest with her parents and younger sister. “We want our rights. We don’t want women to just be used.”

The law, signed by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, applies only to Shia Muslims, who make up between 10 and 20 percent of Afghanistan’s population.

It says that women cannot leave their home without the permission of a male relative or her husband except for a “legitimate purpose,” such as an emergency, and that they must wear makeup and dress up if their husband demands it.

Many of the pro-women rights protesters are students at Kabul University and most are Hazaras, an ethnic group who are the majority of Afghan Shiites.

They handed out a flyer saying the new law “insults the dignity of women” and chanted, “We don’t want a Taliban law, we want a democratic law and we want a law that guarantees human dignity.”

The march began outside a mosque in Kabul, which houses a madrasa. Hundreds of male students poured out of the religious school and confronted the women. “Get out of here, you whores,” some of the men shouted.

“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted back. “We want equality!”

Three hundred women religion students from Khatam-ul-Nabieen Shia University, who support the law, staged a counterprotest.

Ayatollah Mohammed Asef Mohseni, a prominent backer of the law, denied that it permits a husband to rape his wife. But “if a woman says no, the man has the right not to feed her,” he told the press.

Mohseni criticized one amendment to the law that introduced a minimum legal age for marriage, 16 for women and 18 for men. Some 57 percent of Afghan brides are under 16 years old, 87 percent of women there are illiterate, and 1 in 9 dies in childbirth.

After information on the new law became public, the Afghan government came under intense criticism from Washington and other imperialist governments that claim to support women’s rights.

Karzai first said that the media had “mistranslated” the law. But the day after the women’s demonstration in Kabul he told CNN, “Now I have instructed, in consultation with clergy of the country, that the law be revised and any article that is not in keeping with the Afghan constitution and Islamic Sharia must be removed.”  
 
 
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