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SOUTH ASIA
10 South Asia Times SOUTH ASIASouTh ASiA TimeS south asia TALIbAN ‘hAS NoT chANGED,’ SAy WoMEN FAcING SUbjUGATIoN IN AREAS oF AFGhANISTAN UNDER ITS ExTREMIST RULE
By Homa Hoodfar* & moNa Tajali**
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The Taliban insurgents continue their deadly war to seize control of Afghanistan after the departure of United States and NATO forces. As they close in on major cities that were once government strongholds, like Badakhshan and Kandahar, many Afghans – and the world – fear a total takeover.
Afghan women may have the most to fear from these Islamic militants.
We are academics who interviewed 15 Afghan women activists, community leaders and politicians over the past year as part of an international effort to ensure that women’s human rights are defended and constitutionally protected in Afghanistan. For the safety of our research participants, we use no names or first names only here.
“Reform of the Taliban is not really possible,” one 40-year-old women’s rights activist from Kabul told us. “Their core ideology is fundamentalist, particularly towards women.”
from suBjugaTioN To ParliameNT
The Taliban ruled all of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Everyone faced restrictions under their conservative interpretation of Islam, but those imposed on women were the most stringent.
Women couldn’t leave their homes without a male guardian, and were required to cover their bodies from head to toe in a long robe called a burqa. They could not visit health centers, attend school or work.
In 2001, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban regime and worked with Afghans to establish a democratic government.
Officially, the U.S. war in Afghanistan was about hunting down Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The Taliban had sheltered bin Laden in Afghanistan. But the U.S. invoked women’s rights as a justification for the occupation, too.
After the Taliban was driven out, women entered public life in Afghanistan in droves. That includes the fields of law, medicine and politics. Women make up more than a quarter of parliamentarians, and by 2016 more than 150,000 women had been elected to local offices.
rHeToric versus realiTy
Last year, after 20 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. signed an accord with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw American troops if the Taliban severed ties with al-Qaida and entered into peace talks with the government.
Officially, in these talks, Taliban leaders emphasize that they wish to grant women’s rights “according to Islam.”
But the women we interviewed say they believe the Taliban still reject the notion of gender equality.
“The Taliban may have learned to appreciate Twitter and social media for propaganda, but their actions on the ground tells us that they have not changed,” Meetra, a lawyer, shared with us recently.
The Taliban included no women in its own negotiating team, and as their local fighters are taking over districts, women’s rights are being rolled back.
A schoolteacher whose district in northern Mazare-Sharif province recently fell to the Taliban told us that, “In the beginning, when we saw the Taliban interviews on TV, we hoped for peace, as if the Taliban had changed. But when I saw the Taliban up close, they have not changed at all.”
Using mosque loudspeakers, Taliban fighters in areas under their control often announce that women must now wear the burqa and have a male chaperone in public. They burn public schools, libraries and computer labs.
“We destroy them [and] put in place our own religious schools, in order to train future Taliban,” a local fighter from Herat told the channel France 24 in June 2021.
In Taliban-run religious schools for girls, students learn the “appropriate” Islamic role of women, according to the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of the faith. That consists largely of domestic duties.
Such actions demonstrate to many in Afghanistan that the Taliban disagree with the basic principles of democracy, including gender equality and free expression. Taliban negotiators are demanding Afghanistan adopt a new Constitution that would turn it into an “emirate” – an Islamic state ruled by a small group of religious leaders with absolute power.
That’s an impossible demand for the Afghan government, and peace talks have stalled.
a HisTory of equaliTy
Many Muslim countries have steadily increasing gender equality. That includes Afghanistan, where women have been struggling for and gaining new rights for a century.
In the 1920s, Queen Soraya of Afghanistan participated in the political development of her country alongside her husband, King Amanullah Khan. An advocate for women’s rights, Soraya introduced a modern education for women, one that included sciences, history and other subjects alongside traditional home economics-style training and religious topics.
In the 1960s women were among the drafters of Afghanistan’s first comprehensive Constitution, ratified in 1964. It recognized the equal rights of men and women as citizens and established democratic elections. In 1965, four women were elected to the Afghan Parliament; several
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South Asia Times
11
By KeerTHaNa uNNi
sexual violence against women in India manifests itself in various forms, including marital rape, which shockingly is not considered a criminal offence unless the wife is a minor.
Ironically, The Protection of Women against Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which aims to “provide for more effective protection of the rights of women, guaranteed under the Constitution, who are victims of violence of any kind occurring within the family”, excludes spousal rape from its definition of ‘domestic violence’.
secTioN 375 aNd issue of coNseNT
In India, marriage is seen as direct consent for intercourse between the partners despite nonconsensual sex constituting marital rape. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), 2015-16, pointed out that 31% of married women between 15-49 years faced physical, sexual or emotional abuse by their spouses with 5.4 per forced to have sex at some point.
Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, states that rape includes all forms of nonconsensual sex with a woman with the exception of intercourse by a man with his wife aged 15 years or above.
Also Read: Only 36 countries have not criminalised marital rape, India is one of them
Subsequently, Section 375, which ‘safeguarded’ the husband in incidents of marital rape, was amended by the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, by raising the age of consent to intercourse to 18. However, Exception 2 to Section 375, which creates an exception to marital rape if the wife is of 15 years of age or above, was not amended. The Act resulted in an anomaly where forced sex by a husband with a minor wife, between 15 and 18 years of age, was permitted.
Later, in Independent Thought vs Union of India, 2017, the Supreme Court (SC) ruled that sex with a girl below 18 years of age, even by the husband, would constitute rape.
In a historic verdict while reading down Exception 2, the apex court amended the wordings of the particular clause, which now read: “Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 18 years of age, is not rape.”
Though the SC clearly stated that it had not “dealt with the larger issue of marital rape of adult women”, it rapped the Centre for not criminalising sex with a girl under 18 years of age even if the exploiter was her husband.
Therefore, the scourge of men forcing their wives aged 18 years or above to have sex remained uncurbed. With neither the judiciary nor the legislature intervening to address the problem, married women have lost their individuality and the right to autonomy over their bodies.
Anita Menon, a Canadabased social worker fighting domestic violence, told The Leaflet, “Consent is not given importance in a marriage, which shows the lack of gender equity in the relationship. It is used as a licence to violate the body and rights of the partner, which is a clear form of abuse.”
“Marital rape is difficult to prove because, according to society, consent is obvious in a relationship. We fail to see the boundaries and rights of the individual,” Menon said.
sc dismisses Pleas oN mariTal raPe
For the second time, in 2019, the top court refused to entertain a PIL that sought a direction to the Centre to frame guidelines for registration of FIRs in cases of marital rape and make laws for making it a ground for divorce.
Dismissing the plea, the SC asked petitioner advocate Anuja Kapur to approach the Delhi High Court for relief. Eventually, she withdrew the plea, which had stated that “marital rape is no less an offence than murder, culpable homicide or rape per se… It reduces a woman to a corpse living under the constant fear of hurt or injury.”
Contending that since marital rape is not considered a crime, the plea stated that there is no FIR registered by a wife against her husband in any police station. “Rather, it is being compromised by the police authorities to maintain the sanctity of the marriage between the victim and the husband.”
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In 2015, the SC had dismissed a Delhi-based woman’s plea seeking to make marital rape a criminal offence on the grounds that she was “espousing a personal cause and not a public cause”.
In Sreekumar vs Pearly Karun, the Kerala High Court ruled that an offence under Section 376A of the IPC [intercourse by a man with his wife during separation] will be “attracted only when sexual intercourse is conducted by a man with his wife who is living separately from him under a decree of separation or under any custom or usage without her consent”.
mariTal raPe aNd domesTic violeNce
Not criminalising marital rape traps married women in the cycle of violence and forces them to stay in abusive households, which affects their mental and physical health.
The legal immunity provided to spousal rape is not only regressive but also shameful especially when compared to laws on domestic violence and even dowry.
For example, any conduct of a sexual nature that abuses, humiliates, degrades or otherwise violates the dignity of woman is considered sexual abuse under the Domestic Violence Act. Since forced intercourse, or marital rape, is not considered a sexual abuse under the Act, it indirectly accords immunity to a man who ‘rapes’ his wife.
Even the anti-dowry law, Section 498A of the IPC, prescribes a maximum threeyear prison term for “the husband or the relative of the husband of a woman” who subjects her to cruelty.
In Nimeshbhai Bharatbhai Desai vs State of Gujarat, the Gujarat High Court condemned marital rape while examining whether a wife can initiate legal proceedings against her husband for unnatural sex under Section 377 of the IPC and believed that this was a clear case where the accused had endangered the modesty of his wife.
Admitting that “marital rape is in existence in India”, the court termed it as a “disgraceful offence that has scarred the trust and confidence in the institution of marriage”. “A large population of women has faced the brunt of the non-criminalisation of the practice and lives in abject fear for their lives due to such non-criminalisation,” the court observed.
“Victims of marital rape have often reported longterm psychological distress, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, or other anxieties, which could adversely affect their children as well,” Linda Mathew, a psychology student from Christ University, Bengaluru, told The Leaflet.
A study titled, ‘Masculinity, Intimate Partner Violence and Son Preference in India’, jointly conducted by the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) and the International Centre for Research on Women, showed that 75% of the men surveyed expected their partners to agree to sex.
The study also revealed that 60 per cent of men admitted to using violence to dominate and control their partners. More than half of the women surveyed, 52%, experienced some form of violence with 38% suffering physical violence and 35% emotional abuse.
“The study reaffirms and demonstrates that addressing inequitable gender norms and masculinity issues are at the heart of tackling the root causes of intimate partner violence and son preference,” the UNFPA said.
vicTims relucTaNT To seeK HelP
The NFHS also showed that only a very small percentage of married women subjected to spousal rape sought police help. Besides, most victims were turned away by the police. A victim who tried to register a police complaint was asked by cops to ‘adjust’ to her husband’s needs.
“Indian women are conditioned to place their husbands on a pedestal, which holds them back from confiding [about marital rape] in anyone,” Beena Nair, a teacher from Palakkad, Kerala, told The Leaflet.
Most victims confide about sexual violence committed by their husbands in another family member rather than the police or courts.
mariTal raPe violaTes WomeN’s rigHTs
Sexual violence committed by men against their wives and the immunity provided under Section 375 violate Article 21 and Article 14 of the Constitution. While Article 21 guarantees life and personal liberty, Article 14 ensures equality before the law without discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
In Suchita Srivastava vs Chandigarh Administration, the SC observed that “a woman’s right to make reproductive choices is also a dimension of ‘personal liberty’ as understood under Article 21”.
Stressing that a woman’s right to privacy, dignity and bodily integrity should be respected, the Supreme Court observed that there “should be no restriction whatsoever on the exercise of reproductive choices, such as a woman’s right to refuse participation in sexual activity or alternatively the insistence on use of contraceptive methods”.
In another case, the SC observed that privacy also connoted a right to be left alone. “Privacy safeguards individual autonomy and recognises the ability of the individual to control vital aspects of his or her life,” the court observed in Justice K.S.Puttaswamy (Retd) vs Union Of India.
Observing that privacy is the ultimate expression of the sanctity of the individual,” the court further observed: “The ability to make choices is at the core of the human personality. Its inviolable nature is manifested in the ability to make intimate decisions about oneself with a legitimate expectation of privacy.”
Both the Articles clearly state that every citizen has the right to live with dignity and be treated equally before the law without discrimination. Therefore, marital rape and Section 375 are a brazen violation of the Constitution and rights of women.
“The non-criminalisation of marital rape is another example of how the law denies rights to women even today,” the executive director of Delhi-based NGO Sakshi, which fights domestic violence and child sexual abuse, told The Leaflet. “Women have been reduced to mere objects with blanket consent for sexual gratification of their legally entitled partners,” the survivor of domestic violence added.
(Keerthana Unni is a student of Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication, Pune, and is an intern at The Leaflet.)
Courtesy: The Leaflet Source- newsclick.in, 27 Jul 2021.
RIGhT To FREEDoM oF RELIGIoN oR bELIEF UNDER SUSTAINED ATTAck IN PAkISTAN: REPoRT
The Government of Pakistan must urgently respond to serious and ongoing persecution of individuals from religious minority groups by State and non-State actors, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said in a new briefing paper (available at - icj.org) released recently.
“The Pakistani authorities have shamefully failed to address repeated calls to curb the longstanding violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief, including many instances of persecution of religious minority groups,” said Sam Zarifi, ICJ’s Secretary General.
The ICJ’s briefing paper analyses and makes recommendations about violations of the right to freedom of religion or belief in Pakistan in the following contexts:
Offences against religion – so-called blasphemy laws – and their implementation in practice.
The persecution of Ahmadis, including as a result of the criminalization of the public manifestation and practice of their faith; and
Reports of forced conversions of girls belonging to minority religions, often followed by their marriage to Muslim men.
“It is time the Pakistani authorities take these human rights abuses seriously – dismissing the truth about the persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan and calling them ‘isolated incidents’ that are used to give a bad name to the country only emphasizes the failures of the Pakistani Government,” said Zarifi.
These failures, in addition to the ones identified above, include: the State’s ineffective prevention of and response to violence and discrimination by non-State actors against religious minorities, in particular the Shia Muslim community, which has been the target of violence throughout the country; inadequate protection and application of personal laws of religious minority communities; and compelling individuals from religious minority communities to receive Islamic religious instruction in public schools.
For years now, UN human rights mechanisms and experts, including the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, have expressed concern regarding violations of freedom of religion or belief in Pakistan, including the ones in focus in the ICJ’s briefing paper. Both the Human Rights Committee and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief have previously recommended that Pakistan should repeal or amend its so-called blasphemy laws, in accordance with the country’s human rights obligations.
The Constitution of Pakistan provides that Islam shall be the State religion, but it also acknowledges the rights of people to practise other religions. Pakistan is also a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which provides that “everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”
In a landmark 2014 judgment, Pakistan’s Supreme Court clarified and expanded the scope of the right to freedom of religion or belief in the Constitution in light of international human rights law. The Court explained that “religion” cannot be defined in rigid terms, and held that freedom of religion includes freedom of conscience, thought, expression, belief and faith, and that each citizen of Pakistan is free to exercise the right to profess, practise and propagate their religious views, even against the prevailing or dominant views of their own religious denomination or sect.
Nonetheless, such interpretation is often not implemented by courts and other authorities in individual cases regarding the right to freedom of religion or belief.
Considering international human rights law and standards on freedom of religion or belief, the ICJ’s briefing paper provides a series of recommendations to the Pakistani authorities focusing on, among other things, the need to repeal the country’s so-called blasphemy laws and preventing their misuse.
The ICJ also called on Pakistan to repeal all legislative provisions criminalizing the public practice of the religious beliefs of Ahmadis and ensure allegations of “forced conversion” and “forced marriage” of girls from religious minorities are independently, impartially and promptly investigated.
Source- icj.org, July 29, 2021
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others became government ministers.
Afghan women protested any attacks on their rights. For instance, when religious conservatives in 1968 tried to pass a bill banning women from studying abroad, hundreds of schoolgirls organized a demonstration in Kabul and other cities.
Afghan women’s status continued to improve under Soviet-backed socialist regimes of the late 1970s and 1980s. In this era, Parliament further strengthened girls’ education and outlawed practices that were harmful to women, such as offering them as brides to settle feuds between two tribes or forcing widows to marry the brother of their deceased husband.
By the end of the socialist regime in 1992, women were full participants in public life in Afghanistan.
In 1996 the rise of the Taliban interrupted this progress – temporarily.
resilieNT rePuBlic
The post-Taliban era demonstrated Afghan women’s resilience after a grueling setback. It also highlighted the public’s desire for a more democratic, responsive government.
That political project is still in its infancy today. The U.S. withdrawal now threatens the survival of Aghanistan’s fragile democratic institutions.
The Taliban cannot win power at the ballot box. Only around 13.4% of respondents in a 2019 survey by The Asia Foundation expressed some sympathy with the group.
So the Taliban are forcing their authority over the Afghan people using warfare, much as they did in the 1990s. Many women hope what comes next won’t repeat that history. *Professor of Anthropology, Emerita, Concordia University **Associate Professor of International Relations and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Agnes Scott College
Source- The Conversation, July 27, 2021 (Under Creative Commons Licence)
AUSTRALIA’S NGV To RETURN 14 SToLEN ARTIFAcTS To INDIA
By saT NeWs desK
melbourne, 29 January 2021: The Canberrabased National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has announced it will return 14 works of art from its Asian art collection to the Indian Government.
The works of art being repatriated include 13 objects connected to art dealer Subhash Kapoor through Art of the Past and one acquired from art dealer William Wolff. The works include six bronze or stone sculptures, a brass processional standard, a painted scroll, and six photographs.
The NGV spent millions on these purchases and the issue was also the subject of an ABC Four Corners program some years back. “The NGA spent $10.7 million on 22 works from Mr. Kapoor’s “Art of the Past” gallery over several years, including a stunning 11th century Chola bronze sculpture, Shiva Nataraja, which the NGA purchased for more than $5 million in 2008,” says an ABC report.
Another three sculptures sourced from Art of the Past have also been removed from the collection. Further research will be undertaken to identify their place of origin before they are repatriated. Following this action, along with the repatriation of works in 2014, 2016, and 2019, the National Gallery will no longer hold any works acquired through Subhash Kapoor in its collection.
The decision to return the works is the culmination of years of research, due diligence, and an evolving framework for decisionmaking that includes both legal principles and ethical considerations.
The NGV has introduced a new provenance assessment framework that considers available evidence about both the legal and ethical aspects of a work of art’s history. If, on the balance of probability, it is considered likely that an item was stolen, illegally excavated, exported in contravention of the law of a foreign country, or unethically acquired, the National Gallery will take steps to deaccession and repatriate.
A media release says, ” National Gallery of Australia Director Nick Mitzevich said these actions demonstrated the National Gallery’s commitment to being a leader in the ethical management of collections.
“With these developments, provenance decision-making at the National Gallery will be determined by an evidence-based approach evaluated on the balance of probabilities, anchored in robust legal and ethical decision-making principles and considerations,” he said.
“As the first outcome of this change, the Gallery will be returning 14 objects from the Indian art collection to their country of origin.
“This is the right thing to do, it’s culturally responsible and the result of collaboration between Australia and India. We are grateful to the Indian Government for their support and are pleased we can now return these culturally significant objects.”
Mr. Mitzevich said the Gallery would continue its provenance research, including for the Asian art collection, and resolve the status of any works of concern.
The Indian High Commissioner to Australia, Manpreet Vohra, welcomed the decision by the Australian Government and the National Gallery to return the works.
“The Government of India is grateful for this extraordinary act of goodwill and gesture of friendship from Australia,” Mr. Vohra said. “These are outstanding pieces: their return will be extremely well-received by the Government and people of India.”
This latest move follows years of significant research to determine the provenance of works in the Asian art collection, including two independent reviews conducted by former High Court Justice Susan Crennan AC QC.
ThE WoRkS bEING RETURNED ARE:
Chola dynasty (9th-13th centuries), The child-saint Sambandar, 12th century, purchased 1989
Chola dynasty (9th-13th centuries), The dancing child-saint Sambandar, 12th century, purchased 2005
Hyderabad, Telangana, India, Processional standard [‘alam], 1851, purchased 2008
Mount Abu region, Rajasthan, India, Arch for a Jain shrine, 11th-12th century, purchased 2003
Mount Abu region, Rajasthan, India, Seated Jina, 1163, purchased 2003
Rajasthan or Uttar Pradesh, India, The divine couple Lakshmi and Vishnu [Lakshmi Narayana], 10th11th century, purchased 2006
Gujarat, India, Goddess Durga slaying the buffalo demon [Durga Mahisasuramardini], 12th13th century, purchased 2002
Rajasthan, India, Letter of invitation to Jain monks; picture scroll [vijnaptipatra], c. 1835, purchased 2009
Lala D. Dayal, India, Maharaja Sir Kishen Pershad Yamin, 1903, purchased 2010
Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, not titled ['Manorath' portrait of donor and priests before Shri Nathji, Udaipur, Rajasthan], unknown date, purchased 2009
Guru Das Studio, not titled [Gujarati family group portrait], purchased 2009
Shanti C. Shah, Hiralal A Gandhi memorial portrait, 1941, purchased 2009
Venus Studio, India, not titled [Portrait of a man], 1954, purchased 2009
Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, not titled [Portrait of a woman], unknown date, purchased 2009
