Bullies win another round

Feb 18th, 2011 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

If you haven’t already, sign the petition to Karzai to save Afghan women’s shelters.

UN analyst Una Moore explains why.

Conservative politicians and media personalities have long railed against Afghanistan’s few women’s shelters and demanded that the facilities be closed. Two years ago, the government appointed a hard-line mullah to lead a commission to investigate shelters and recommend reforms…

Now, the shelter commission’s verdict is in. The government will seize all women’s shelters countrywide and place them under the control of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and the police. Women and girls seeking protection will have to plead their cases before an admissions panel of government employees and undergo medically dubious “examinations” to prove they are not guilty of adultery or prostitution. If a woman passes both tests and is admitted, she will not be allowed to leave without official permission. In effect, Afghanistan’s few refuges for abused women are about to become prisons.

Under the new shelter regulations, if a woman’s family comes to claim her, she must be handed over.

Because, you see, the whole thing is obviously a prostitution ring set up by foreigners. Any woman who is not under the thumb of the man who owns her is self-evidently a prostitute. Therefore shelters must be run by reactionary men who will have the women raped by examination on entry and then either imprisoned in the former shelter or returned to the men who own them.

Men are people and women are their livestock. Don’t you ever forget it.

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