Afghanistan Peace CampaignThe shocking level of physical violence against women permitted under the Taliban’s new laws has been revealed this week by the case of a woman in northern Afghanistan, who said she was beaten with a cable wire by her husband and told by a judge: “You want a divorce just because of that? … A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you.”
Farzana* said her husband was quick-tempered and often resorted to beating her. He regularly humiliated her and called her “disabled”, she said, because her right leg was slightly shorter than the left. She had tolerated the abuse for the sake of their children, but one evening, she said, his violence went too far.
“One day I was very sick and had no energy to cook dinner. When he came home from work, he said: ‘Now you don’t even do the housework?’ I told him I was sick, but he beat me with a mobile phone charger cable. The marks on my back and arms remained for several days, but I didn’t think of taking photos that might one day help me in court.”
After the attack, she decided to seek an end to the violence by filing for divorce, but when her case reached a Taliban court recently, Farzana said the judge not only rejected her application but belittled her claims of abuse.
“When I said he beats me and constantly humiliates and insults me, and that I want a divorce, the judge asked: ‘You want a divorce just because of that? Don’t you have another reason?’” When Farzana went on to describe the attack she had recently suffered, she said the judge asked whether she had proof of the abuse.
“When I said no, he told me: ‘You were young and enjoyed your husband. Now that he is getting older you are making excuses to divorce him so you can marry someone else. Go back, you have a nice husband, live with him. A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you. Islam allows a man to beat his wife if she disobeys him, to discipline her. Go, and don’t come again asking for divorce over such things.’”
Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the human rights organisation Rawadari, said such cases were now commonplace in Afghanistan. Women either had to live with domestic violence or seek justice from the Taliban courts, she said, “where they are often lectured and sent back to the same abusive houses or worse, punished for ‘disobeying’ husbands”.
Women’s rights activists, UN experts and lawyers have long argued that the conditions being imposed on Afghan women, including banning them from schools, most jobs and speaking in public, amounts to gender apartheid.
But a new criminal code given to courts last year – and publicised in January – has gone further by permitting violence against women and preventing them from seeking justice. According to the code, men are allowed to beat their wives as long as they do not use “obscene force”, defined as causing fractures, wounds or visible bruises, which the wife must prove in court. For this crime a man may be sentenced to only 15 days of imprisonment. Akbar said the code gave husbands a “licence for domestic violence and punishments, short of breaking bones”.
Speaking about the code to the UN this week, Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel laureate, said: “This is not culture. It is not religion. It is a system of segregation and domination. We must call the regime in Afghanistan by its true name: gender apartheid.”
After the court verdict, Farzana said she was forced to return to her husband, who had now become more violent than before. “He tells me: ‘Either endure it or die.’ He doesn’t even allow me to go to my father’s house.” The judge also told Farzana she could not object to her husband taking a second wife.
UN Women special representative in Afghanistan, Susan Ferguson, said: “If we allow Afghan women and girls to be silenced – and punished purely because they are women – we send a message that the rights of women and girls everywhere are disposable, and that is an immensely dangerous precedent.”
* Name has been changed