In
Kabul, Afghanistan, many women are being put in jail for “moral” crimes. There
are many horrifying stories of Afghani women who are persecuted for things that
should not even be considered as crimes in the first place. Asma ran away from
her husband who beat her, threw boiling water on her, gave her an STD, and
announced that he would marry his mistress. Fawzia, took refuge with a family
that drugged her and forced her into prostitution. Farah fell in love with her
friend’s boyfriend and eloped with him. And Gulpari was kidnapped off the
street by a stalker who decided he wanted to marry her and she turned him into
the first policeman that she saw. However, all of these women and girls were
jailed, as hundreds of Afghani women have been, for being convicted of these
“moral” crimes. But the testimonies of their own abusers are what are landing
them in jail. These women were involved in the case studies done by the Human
Rights Watch, which had interviewed 58 girls and women who were in prison and
who often had been convicted of crimes that most other countries would not
consider as crimes. Many of these women were simply convicted for running away
in which is not even considered as a crime under the Afghan penal code. The
Human Rights Watch has called on the Afghan government to release 400 women
under these same accusations. One girl was separated from her brother in a
crowd and was therefore accused of having sex outside of marriage, considered a
crime in Afghanistan. However, even after a test that proved she was still a
virgin, she was still accused of running away and jailed anyway. Afghanistan’s
model new legislation to protect women, the Law on the Elimination of Violence against
women has done little to stop traditional practices such as baad, the giving
away of daughters to settle family scores, violent abuse by relatives, and
forced and under-age marriages. Many of the women interviewed were victims of
acts criminalized under this law however; it is not the ones committing the crimes
that are being persecuted but the victims. One woman was stabbed with a screw
driver all over her body but her husband was not prosecuted because she didn’t die.
The women fleeing the abuse are incarcerated and the men responsible for this
flight are not prosecuted. The president issued a decree stating that women who
fled their homes to marry someone of their choice would be pardoned but then he
also signed a declaration from the strict and religious Ulema Council in which
harms women’s rights. This council stated that women were secondary to men,
should never travel without male chaperons and should neither work nor study if
it meant mixing with men. Even 10 years after the fall of the Taliban, many
women still face a lot of injustice. However, the Human Rights Watch’s director
is optimistic and feels that they might be able to end this particular
persecution of women victims.
The
unjust persecution of these women in Afghanistan is a major social issue. These
women, as many women throughout the world, are stratified based on their gender.
They have less power, wealth, and prestige than the men and so thus, are often
treated badly and abused. However, the people in Afghanistan, as well as in many
other countries, are socialized to think that each gender is supposed to behave
in a certain way and that women are to be subordinate to men. Women and men are
each considered to have their specific assigned gender roles and as in the case
of Afghanistan, if women are to break out of their traditional gender role,
then they are persecuted for it. It is as if men are the majority and dominant
group and the women are the minority that lacks power within the stratified
social order. Women are not treated as equals and oftentimes do not receive
just treatment. When it comes to women being abused and faced with violence,
there is a desperate need for social action. The mobilization for action by the
Human Rights Watch group is a positive attempt to change the behaviors,
actions, and attitudes of the Afghani people and their government. Even though
this culture may often feel that they have to stick with “tradition,” the
change that the Human Rights Watch group is fighting for is a just and much
needed social change. The people of Afghanistan and throughout the entire world
need to open up their minds and use their sociological imagination to see how
this problem is a big social issue affecting many rather than just a personal
issue that they should just have to face on their own. Without the interference
and action taken by others, the women of Afghanistan will never have justice
and will only continue to be stratified and treated unequally simply because of
their gender. Yet if gender is a mere social construct, then why do we continue
to place so much emphasis on it? What is socially constructed is not set in
stone but something that has been created by society. Thus, this social construct
of gender in Afghanistan that puts women beneath men can be changed in order to
bring the social justice that these women, for being wrongly persecuted for the
“moral” crimes that they are accused of, deserve. For this social issue has
begun to spiral out of control and needs as much mobilization for action as
possible to change this social injustice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/world/asia/report-finds-continued-jailing-for-afghan-girls-running-from-abuse.html?_r=2&ref=world
No comments:
Post a Comment