Afghan women are reportedly defying the Taliban through the forbidden act of signing after a ‘bizarre and brutal’ new ban on their voices in public.
The lyrics of a popular song ringing out on social media says: “Their boots might be on my neck. Or their fists to my face. But with our deep light inside, I will fight through this night.”
The women are flooding social media with recordings of this and other songs after the Taliban published its first set of laws for the country last week, ordering women to cover their entire bodies, including faces, while stepping out of home.
Women are also banned from reading, singing, or speaking in public by the Taliban in their so-called bid to discourage vice and promote virtue.
The Taliban have also banned images of living beings, which also includes photographs. Women are not supposed to befriend other women or they will be deemed infidels under the new rules which are largely seen as the Taliban’s interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.
“We are nothing that have a price… They have sold us once for a gun and toys for a bag of fries…,” two women dressed in burqas were seen singing in a video shared on social media. “You placed the stamp of silence on my mouth until further notice,” sang another woman. Slogans of “my voice is not private” and “stand with Afghan women” were used to share the video.
The authenticity of the videos has not been verified by The Independent.
Women in Afghanistan are singing to protest the Taliban’s new “morality decree”. This decree is yet another brazen attack on human rights and must be immediately revoked. pic.twitter.com/ft6BeH7vdL
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) August 29, 2024
Human rights groups have criticized the Taliban’s new laws.
“These are the latest bizarre and brutal rules the Taliban have imposed to deny women and girls their rights to freedom of expression and movement, as well as their autonomy and identity,” said Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
She called the fresh set of restrictions “a further sign of their determination to structurally re-engineer Afghan society to ensure women are seldom if ever seen or heard outside the home”.
Since the laws kicked in, the Taliban have also fined women in Herat who were seen without a male guardian or mehram, and those who did not cover their faces, reported local news channel Amu Television.
Already three years into controlling Afghanistan, the Taliban has managed to ban girls and women from public spaces as it barred education for girls above the sixth grade because they said it didn’t comply with their interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. Girls and women are also banned from salons, public parks, gyms and markets.
The decree must be revoked, said Amnesty International as it shared the videos of several women singing.
Roza Otunbayeva, who heads the UN mission in the country, UNAMA, condemned the laws for their “distressing vision” for Afghanistan’s future.
The laws extend the “already intolerable restrictions” on the rights of women and girls, with “even the sound of a female voice” outside the home apparently deemed a moral violation, she said. The official had engaged with the Taliban in June in Doha after removing women and civil society members from the discussion table, which many experts said was at the behest of the Taliban.
“After decades of war and in the midst of a terrible humanitarian crisis, the Afghan people deserve much better than being threatened or jailed if they happen to be late for prayers, glance at a member of the opposite sex who is not a family member, or possess a photo of a loved one,” Ms Otunbayeva said.
The criticism was also echoed by the Japanese embassy in Kabul which has started active diplomatic relations with the Taliban rulers.
It urged the authorities to “listen to the voice of Afghan women and girls for education, employment, and freedom of movement” for the future of the country in a rare public criticism.
