Feminist Majority Leads Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, 1998

Please Note: Article is from:

Feminist Daily News Wire
March 2, 1998



Feminist Majority Leads Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in AfghanistanNational Board Member Mavis Leno Testifies at Forum
Sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein

Washington DC -- Mavis Leno, a writer, resident of Los Angeles, California, and member of the National Board of the Feminist Majority, today testified at a forum sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to call attention to the extreme human rights violations being committed against women in Afghanistan. Since taking power, the Taliban militia group, which now controls much of Afghanistan, has placed Afghan women under virtual house arrest. The Taliban has decreed that women and girls can no longer attend school; women are banned from employment; women are not allowed to leave their homes unless accompanied by a husband, father, brother, or son; women who do leave their homes have to be covered from head to toe in a "burqa," with only a mesh opening to see and breath through; the windows of homes with women occupants are required to be painted opaque so the women inside cannot be seen; women are prohibited from being treated by male doctors; and women are banned from wearing white socks and shoes that make noise as they walk.

"Women are being beaten, shot at, and even killed for violating these draconian decrees -- for merely trying to go to work, leaving their homes alone, or violating the Taliban's extreme dress orders," stated Leno. Leno also shared a report from journalist Jan Goodwin that girls at the state orphanage in Kabul have not been allowed to leave the building to go outside since September of 1996 -- although the boys go outside every day to attend school and to play.