Le Monde’s journalistic side has a collegial organization, most journalists are tenured, unionized, and financial stakeholders. [They currently have a special offer for a year of $4 a month for LeMonde in English]]
They have consistently brought up the plight of women in Afghanistan, I have linked, for your information a series of articles over the last two years, starting with today’s op-ed piece. [In English]
I’ll include a note on the BBC documentary about our Talibangelical women: America’s New Female Right, ugh.
The Taliban’s War On Women
* The Bolding is mine.
Op-Ed: Aline Jalliet, author: 'In Afghanistan, the female voice itself becomes an act of dissent'
The silencing.
Why, after having already covered them from head to toe, prevented them from working, learning, playing music, walking in parks, looking men in the eye, or traveling alone, are they going as far as to deprive women of their voice? "The voice is like the sign of life," said Afghan journalist Hamina Adam on France Culture radio channel on August 27. "It's just another way of killing us even more. It's a way of destroying what little self-esteem women have left."
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021, women's rights have been reduced to nothing. Thousands of women have been barred from the jobs they once held, and thousands of young girls have been excluded from school or university. Forced to stay at home, isolated from each other, they are increasingly living as prisoners.
"The mere sound of a woman’s voice outside the home is apparently considered a moral violation," said Roza Otunbayeva, head of the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan, on TV5 Monde on August 26. In a country where women must avoid the gaze of men, their voice was their last mark of individual identity, which the Taliban reduced to a seductive lure. If the voice demands the attention of the ear, it also attracts the eye like a magnet. Requiring women to remain silent in public spaces makes them transparent, blending into the background; it's easy to forget they're there.
*A note on the BBC's latest documentary
America’s New Female Right review – this lazy BBC documentary fails to tackle dangerously extreme views -The Guardian
This shoddy programme neglects to properly challenge the hard-right views of the women interviewed. It’s a wasted opportunity
We are not going to empathise with statements such as: “Women getting the right to vote has led to every form of degeneracy,” “Feminism was absolutely created to destabilise the family [and] western civilisation,” and: “Feminism is a thousand times more toxic than the ‘toxic masculinity’ we hear so much about.” We are unlikely to agree that “Satan’s agenda” is to destroy the nuclear family structure in order to control society.
Blaming women for the failure and historic misogyny of men and the church. Wow, that takes some sick twisted logic.
The killer line by the author of the review.
It’s so lazy. “Point and weep” documentaries are only half a step removed from the “point and laugh” kind that commissioners have supposedly left behind as we move into a more sensitive, sophisticated era.
Effing Bingo.
So I’ll also note:
Blaming the Afghan women for their plight, is no better than blaming the victim as these Talibangelical women are doing in the US, are you fighting them?
Right, let's get back to Le Monde, are you still with me?
Op-Ed Afghanistan: 'It's time for the world to stop following the situation but impose targeted economic sanctions'
On this sad anniversary, two years after the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15, 2021, the situation of Afghan women is crystal clear. As a result of the Taliban's relentless rule, they are today the most marginalized in the world, without status, completely erased, despised as human beings and citizens of their own country.
Op-Ed 'In Afghanistan, the humanitarian imperative must prevail over any consideration'
A year ago, the Taliban regime banned women and girls from accessing education. Since December 24, 2022, women have been officially banned from working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Since August 15, 2021, humanitarian organizations, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and NGOs are the only organizations still present in the country.
OP-Ed: 'Being a woman is considered a sin, even a crime, in Afghanistan'
They now require them to wear masks during television broadcasts, recommend whipping girls and women for wearing jeans, forbid them to work with NGOs, and arrest, beat and torture those who stand up to them and demand their rights.
Editorial: We cannot abandon the women of Afghanistan
The Taliban may have accelerated the drift of a country whose economy and most basic conditions of existence are in constant danger of collapsing, but they are still waging a relentless social war. Women are both the targets and the victims of this war, when they could be the ones to keep their country afloat.
Op Ed: Afghanistan: 'The struggle for the respect of fundamental rights must continue'
The first victims of this new society are women, who have been deprived of their fundamental rights, forced into submission in personal and professional settings, and hit hard by severe repression. Human rights defenders, journalists, artists, magistrates, lawyers, and all those who reject this regime are also subject to daily persecution. They all fear for their lives and those of their loved ones.
Op-Ed: 'Afghanistan is experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis as humanitarian aid is hampered'
This shows how complex the equation is for the new Afghan regime, which is not free from the looming threat of possible "food riots." Let us hope that financial sanctions are not part of a deliberate and torpid strategy of asphyxiation, exposing the civilian population once again to suffering and violence.
Editorial: One year on from the return of the Taliban, don't abandon the Afghan people
One year later and those back in power already have a grim record. Women are now banned from education and can only travel with an escort, veiled from head to toe. All forms of freedom of expression have been muzzled, and many former employees of the overthrown regime are harassed, forced into hiding or exile.
After hinting that teenage girls would be allowed to stay in school, unlike during their first experiment in power from 1996 to 2001, the Taliban made an abrupt U-turn on March 23, closing girls' secondary schools within hours of their reopening.
Taliban violently disperses rare women's protest in Kabul
Around 40 women chanting "bread, work and freedom" marched in front of the education ministry building in Kabul, before the fighters dispersed them by firing their guns into the air, an Agence France-Presse correspondent reported. Some women protesters who took refuge in nearby shops were chased and beaten by Taliban fighters with their rifle butts.
The demonstrators carried a banner which read "August 15 is a black day" as they demanded rights to work and political participation. "Justice, justice. We're fed up with ignorance," they chanted, many not wearing face veils.
Some journalists covering the protest, the first women's rally in months, were also beaten by the Taliban fighters, an AFP correspondent saw.
Don’t blame the Afghan women for their violent repression.
What are you doing to refute America’s Talibangelical women?
Would you be interested if I wrote more on the plight of women around the world?
A Sunday muse
~A
NB I subscribe/contribute to three newspapers The Guardian, Haaretz, and Le Monde.