Canadians hearing the voices of Afghan women
CTV
Canadians advocating for the rights of Afghan women and girls are asking the world to lend an ear to their voices and a helping hand to those being stripped of their rights.
Canadians advocating for the rights of Afghan women and girls are asking the world to lend an ear to their voices and a helping hand to those being stripped of their rights.
Since the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan three years ago, it has imposed strict rules on the public lives of women. Last month, the Taliban issued a manifesto adding further powers to the Ministry of Virtue and Vice that ban women from singing and reading outside their homes.
Activists in Afghanistan and around the world have since posted images of themselves singing in defiance. In one video, a woman wearing a burqa performs a revolutionary tune. "You made me a prisoner in my home for the crime of being a woman," she sings.
The Calgary-based non-profit Right to Learn Afghanistan, formerly known as Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan, says the Taliban's crackdown reinforces the need for the world to speak out.
"This is gradual death," Right to Learn Afghanistan senior director Murwarid Ziayee says. "The women are alive, but it is just breathing, there is nothing beyond that."
Ziayee says Afghan women fear the international community has turned its back on them, and they feel left alone in their fight for freedom and basic rights, from education to employment.
But the voices of women, now risking Taliban retribution by posting online in protest, do echo in the hearts of some who fled Afghanistan for Canada.
