Afghan women sing in defiance of Taliban laws silencing their voices
Ashifa Kassam and agencies
Sun 1 Sep 2024 15.52 BST
Women push back at law stating they must not sing or read aloud in public by posting videos of themselves singing. Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have posted videos of themselves singing in protest against the Taliban’s laws banning women’s voices in public.
Late last month the Taliban published
new restrictions aimed, it said, at combating
vice and promoting virtue. The 35-article document, which includes a raft
of draconian laws, deems women’s voices
to be potential instruments of vice and stipulates that women must not sing or
read aloud in public, nor let their voices carry beyond the walls of their
homes.
As rights campaigners reacted with
horror, Afghan women began pushing back. Across the country, women began
uploading videos of themselves singing, in
defiance of the Taliban’s systematic efforts to erase women from the public sphere.
“No command, system or man can close
the mouth of an Afghan woman,” one 23-year-old said after posting her own
video. The 39-second video showed her singing outdoors. The song she sang had
been carefully chosen for its lyrics, which spoke of protest and strength. “I
am not that weak willow that trembles in every wind,” she sang. “I am from
Afghanistan.”
In another video, reportedly recorded
in Kabul, a woman is shown singing while dressed from head to toe in black.
“You have silenced my voice for the foreseeable future,” she sang, her face
concealed by a long veil. “You have imprisoned me in my home for the crime of
being a woman.”
Other videos showed women in
Afghanistan singing alone or in small groups, using hashtags such as “#My voice
is not forbidden” and “#No to Taliban” as they raised their voices against what
UN officials have described as a “gender-based apartheid”.
Others around the world soon joined
in. “We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” said Hoda
Khamosh, an Afghan woman living in Norway. She posted her own video in a bid to
show “that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased”, she
said.
The new laws also force women to wear thick clothes that completely
cover their bodies – including their faces – while in public, and bans them
from looking directly at men they are
not related to by blood or marriage.
Those who fail to comply with the restrictions can be detained and punished
in a manner deemed appropriate by Taliban officials. On Tuesday, the UN high commissioner for human rights called for the law to
be repealed, describing it as “utterly
intolerable”.
The new law cements policies that seek to completely erase women’s presence in
public, “effectively attempting to render them into faceless, voiceless
shadows”, said a spokesperson, Ravina Shamdasani.
Since the Taliban returned to power
in 2021, they have steadily eroded
women’s rights. Women and girls have been blocked from attending secondary
school, banned from nearly all forms of paid employment, and barred from public
parks and gyms. Earlier this year, the Taliban also announced that they would
resume the practice of stoning women to
death for adultery.
Pre-reading
part
Task 1. Paraphrase the statements. Do you agree or disagree? Why (not)? How
is the statement related to the headline of the article?
The
only man who can tell a woman where to stop is a bus conductor.
Task 2. Scan the article and make a list of glossary
words from the words and phrases given in bold and provide Russian equivalents
in written form.
While-reading part
Task 2. Read the article and be ready to translate it.
Task 3. Find
in the text of the article sentences containing new vocabulary and explain the
meaning in English. Make up sentences of your own using the new vocabulary.
Task
4. Make
up a dialogue/interview using the new vocabulary.
Post-reading part
Task 5. Divide the text of the article into logical parts. Make
up questions to each logical part to ask your groupmates in class.
Task 6. Be ready to discuss in the classroom with your group
mates:
А) What was the correspondent’s intention to tell the
general public about?
B) What is the main idea/problem
raised?
Task 7. Give a summary of the article.
Task 8. Write a rendering of the article. Mind the rules of a rendering writing.
Task 9. Learn the new
vocabulary from the article be ready to write the dictation-translation.
