While poverty explodes and famine spreads, freedoms continue to decline in Afghanistan. Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban have made it a point to undermine human rights under the pretext of imposing Islamic law on residents.
This Monday, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) announced the gradual implementation of a new law prohibiting the dissemination of photos and videos of living beings in the media. The text contains other measures targeting news media, such as a ban on publishing “content hostile to sharia and religion” or that “humiliates Muslims”.
One more step towards an ever more repressed society, already oppressed by a most authoritarian regime. Already this summer, the 35 articles of the law to “promote virtue and prevent vice” had further reduced the little remaining freedom, taking women as priority targets.
Haro on women
To silence this voice that I cannot hear. After banning them from education, from working for NGOs, from entering parks, fairgrounds, gymnasiums, Afghanistan’s leaders further reduced the few rights of women that remained. After the law on morals promulgated in September, members of the fairer sex must cover their body and face entirely when leaving the home, but also in front of another woman who is not Muslim. According to testimonies collected by AFP, in Kabul the PVPV actively patrols and gives warnings to women without “mahram”, with poorly covered hair or without gloves.
With ever more imagination in repressive measures, the Taliban have also prohibited women from making their voices heard outside their homes. “The only right we are given is to breathe. And again…” Hamida Aman, founder of Begum TV, an educational radio station for Afghan women, protested on France Culture at the end of August.
Men not spared
If women are the main victims of the illiberal regime established for three years, it is the whole of society which sees, helplessly, its rights diminishing.
Men are also affected by certain measures such as that, since September, of wearing a beard, longer than a fist, of covering themselves with loose clothing at least from the navel to below the knee, when they play sports. A 23-year-old Kabuli told AFP that he had been arrested three times for not wearing a beard: “I was scared and I promised them that I was going to let it grow. »
More room for religion
In this law, religion actually takes a predominant place. “The application of Sharia law is our responsibility until death,” declared the supreme leader of the Taliban on the occasion of the third anniversary of their reconquest of power in Afghanistan.
In addition to the ban on celebrating the winter solstice or the Persian New Year, prayer (at the appointed time) and fasting during Ramadan are obligatory. In the event of control by the moral police, Afghans will not be able to have the excuse of being stuck on public transport since companies are ordered to adapt their connections to allow passengers and drivers to pray on time .
Our file on Afghanistan
Sex and religion have never gotten along very well. But until now, certain practices could be tolerated in the shadow of a couple’s intimacy. Without really knowing how the police responsible for monitoring the application of these measures will go about it, one of them nevertheless prohibits sodomy “even with one’s wife”.
Less space for leisure
As in any authoritarian regime, especially when it is based on religious precepts, leisure activities are increasingly limited, particularly everything relating to culture but not only that. In Afghanistan, music is banned in public, but also gambling. Traditional games with hard-boiled eggs, nuts or sheep bones are also prohibited. At the relational level, it is forbidden to be friends with non-Muslims and to provide assistance to them.
