Women protesting in Kabul against a controversial new law were pelted with stones, jostled and spat on today as they held what is believed to be the first public demonstration calling for equal rights for women in recent Afghan history.
The protest by about 200 women called for amendment of the controversial Shia Family Law, passed last month by the Afghan Parliament, and enforcement of article 22 of the Afghan constitution, which gives equal rights to men and women.
It provoked a furious reaction from local men and a mob quickly surrounded the protesters amid violent scenes close to the Parliament building.
The new law, which applies to the 15 per cent of the population who are Shia Muslim, has drawn widespread international condemnation since it was passed in March. President Obama called it abhorrent after leaked drafts of the law showed it apparently legalised marital rape and child marriage and reintroduced restrictions on women that were notorious under the Taleban period of rule.
The Afghan Government has since announced a review of the legislation, which has yet to come into force. Political opponents of the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, have suggested that the law was passed by as a sop to powerful Shia religious parties ahead of the country’s presidential elections in August.
Carrying banners that proclaimed “We want dignity in the law” and “Islam is justice”, the small all-woman march was initially matched by a peaceful counter-demonstration of 300 or so female religious students from the Khatam-ul-Nabieen Shiite University in Kabul. The university is attached to the Khatam Al-Nabi Mosque, a huge building constructed with Iranian backing and overseen by Mohammad Asif Mohseni, a leading Shia cleric who has strongly backed the new law.
However, as the protesters tried to march to Parliament they were blocked and then surrounded by a second crowd of Afghan men who threatened to overwhelm police. Banners were torn to the ground, women were spat on and stones were thrown.
“I am not afraid. Women have always been oppressed throughout history,” Zara, an 18-year-old student from Kabul told The Times, as men in the crowd surrounding her jostled and screamed abuse. “This law is against the dignity of women and all the international community opposes it. The US President calls it abhorrent. Don’t you see that actually we are the majority?”
Most of the women protesters were ethnic Hazaras, who make up the vast majority of Shias in Afghanistan and have historically been an oppressed minority. Many were students from Kabul University, though there were also older women and a small number of Hindus and Sikhs.
Local sources suggested that some of the protesters were members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (Rawa), a highly secretive women’s rights organisation with Maoist origins founded in the 1970s by an activist known only as Meena who was later murdered by religious fundamentalists.
Those in favour of the new Shia Family law chanted “Down with the Christians. Down with the apostates.”
At one stage both sides chanted “We want honour and dignity for women”, reflecting their starkly different interpretations of the new law.
“We think those who oppose this law in fact oppose the Koran,” said Nesa Naseri, a female student of Sharia Studies who was part of the demonstration in favour of the law. “This law does not approve raping, it is rather about loyalty of wife to husband and husband to wife. Rape is what you can see in the West, where men don’t feel responsibility for their wives and leave them to go with several men.”
“They compare this law with Taleban law, which is not logical. The Taleban did not let women to go out and study, but this law encourages the women to study and become educated.”
Shia clerics have dismissed the international outcry over the law as cultural imperialism.
A number of women MPs were among the protesters opposing the law. “The numbers of women here today are not important,” said Fauzia Kofi, an MP from Badakhshan who has been a vocal opponent of the new law. “It is the values we stand for that are important. They are the values of equality.”
Somes claim that proper procedures were ignored during the passing of the law. “The law was not studied article by article. It was agreed by the men that it should be voted through as a package, so we missed our chance to make amendments to it,” Sabrina Sagheb, a Kabul MP, said.
