Ógra Aontú condemns recent Taliban human rights violation
Ógra Aontú has strongly condemned the new Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes. This decision is the most recent in a series of discriminatory laws that have outraged many human rights groups.
The Taliban has released a number of new “vice and virtue” laws last month, approved by dictator Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their face and body in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid “leading men into temptation and vice”.
Women’s voices are also deemed to be potential motives of vice and so will be banned in public under the new restrictions. Women must also not be heard singing or reading aloud, even from inside their own homes.
Speaking today, the President of Ógra Aontú, John Bryan stated: “The recent laws imposed on the people of Afghanistan under the Taliban are an utter disgrace to basic human dignity. They must be a reminder to us all of the dangers of sharia law, its totalitarian rule, and its effects on the lives and freedoms of women. The new laws extend the abhorrent restrictions on the rights of women and girls already imposed by the Taliban since they took power in August 2021, and furthermore reveals the Talibans view of women as mere property”.
He continued, saying: “When they reduce the role of women within society to the likes of personal property it is incredibly alarming, yet there's a sentiment among many that this is just a part of culture, and that we have no right to criticise it. Human rights must take precedent over perceived cultural norms. There have been very few responses to what is happening, and the Taliban are emboldened by this exhausting negligence. They must be held accountable.”
“The United Nations and the European Union are seemingly trying to normalise relations with the Taliban, overlooking the fact that the Taliban are committing widespread human rights violations. The Nations of the world must join in forever condemning the Taliban’s oppression of Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls, and its part in the criminalisation of women’s most basic liberty.” he concluded.
