WUNRN
http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/ilab/story/Afghan-activists-live-loud/
Afghanistan – Women Activists Live with Risks but Commitment to More Rights & Empowerment for Afghan Women
October 13, 2015 -
The murder of Farkhunda Malikzada, an Afghan religious scholar who had
dedicated her life to fighting superstitions within the religious community,
shocked the world in March 2015. She was killed by a group of more than 100 men who
beat her to death, ran her over with a car and then set her on fire. She was
killed because a senior religious cleric falsely accused her of burning the
Quran, according to the BBC.
After her death,
protests were held to demand justice in Afghanistan and around the world.
Despite global and national efforts, the trial for Malikzada was called a failure by many activists because several killers and
policemen who watched the murder were recently acquitted.
Illustration
by Sam Ward, Investigative Reporting Workshop
Malikzada's is only
the latest in the contemporary history of assassinations of Afghan women for
their work. In September 2008, Malalai Kakar was shot by two unknown gunmen on the way to her work in Kandahar,
Afghanistan. Her teenage son was seriously injured. She was perhaps the most
prominent female police officer, and she was known for standing up for victims
of gender-based violence. After her murder, A Taliban spokesman took credit for the job with pride. Malalai Kakar, Benafsha, Hanifa Safi,
Safia Ahmed-jan, Zakia Zaki and
Shaima Rezayi
are only a few of the dozens of women have been killed under the watch of the
internationally backed government of Afghanistan for protesting or for simply
participating in public life in the past 13 years.
What is certain is
that Afghan women who live publicly and participate in the political and social
arenas of life do not feel safe. In interviews done over the last six months by
phone and online, they say they do not see local officials as allies, but often
as a hurdle or threat. They are not certain that they will not be beaten,
raped, tortured or killed. Yet, they say they want to continue their struggle
for a more progressive Afghanistan.
They are painting murals, organizing protests, singing songs about gender-based violence, lobbying for more
progressive policies, running businesses, joining the armed forces, teaching and learning every day.
Many of these women are publicly involved in changing laws and mindsets and
introducing a new role for women in the country.
All the women
interviewed for this project were adamant about continuing their struggles for
equality and seemed fearless in the face of threats. This investigation
examines the struggles and hopes of some of these activists as well as why they
continue to speak up.
Courtesy of The Institute
for Economic Empowerment of Women
Journalist
Humira Saqib runs the Afghan Women's News Agency.
Humira Saqib, 32, is a journalist in Kabul, Afghanistan. She runs the Afghan Women’s News Agency
and Negah-e-zan, a magazine dedicated to women. She has been working in
Afghanistan for most of her life but had to leave the country in 2011 after an
attempt by unknown men to kidnap her.
After Saqib attended
the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan and advocated for continued focus on women’s
rights, she received many threatening phone calls. The threats only increased when
Saqib took it on herself to stand up to a declaration by the Ulema Council that
curtailed women’s rights and demanded that women seek their husbands’
permission prior to leaving their homes.
“After I wrote
several articles critiquing the Ulema Council on its misogynist fatwas, the
threats increased,” she said in a recent interview. “At the time I lived in
Macroyan-e-seh, Kabul. My little daughter was pushed and threatened, and I was kidnapped. I was able to escape, but the threats only
increased,” she says.
Saqib recorded the
threatening phone calls and took them to the local police station. No one was
arrested for the assault on her safety, but the local law enforcement
authorities promised “to keep an eye on the neighborhood,” she said. Her
official letters to the security officials remained unanswered. She also went
to civil society and human rights organizations, but none of them had a
solution.
“I was supported by
nobody; no one in the government or the civil society supported me,” she said.
Meanwhile, the phone
calls became more frequent and Saqib began to fear for her life. Soon after the
kidnapping, she and her family moved to Tajikistan, but a year later, she
returned to her country to continue her work.
“I could have stayed
in Tajikistan and remained safe,” she says, “but it was the spirit of the
struggle that brought me back. I think our goal of gender equality and justice
is a sacred one, so even though I have no sense of safety and my family is in
danger, I have come back to work towards that goal.”
Saqib does not feel
lonely in her struggle. She says that most of the messages and calls she
receives are supportive, and despite the threats, she knows there are people
who are on her side. In addition, although she reports on gender-based violence
and women’s issues, Saqib sees her struggle as one against terrorism and
extremism as well. Leaving the country, to her, would be the equivalent of
leaving the “battleground for the extremists.”
The threats have only
increased Saqib’s determination because she sees them as proof of how important
her work is. Since returning to Afghanistan, she has campaigned to pass the
Elimination of Violence against Women Act, to increase women’s participation in
the government and the political arena and to end discrimination against female
journalists, among other things. She is an active member of the Committee for
Afghan Women’s Political Participation, and she often participates on public
media conversations to raise awareness about women’s issues. In addition to
harassment and threats in the offline world, her outspokenness on social media
has led to many attempts to hack her platforms and smear campaigns, but she
says, “Someone has to speak.”
Photo courtesy Shakila
Ibrahimkhail
TV
journalist Shakila Ibrahimkhail reports on women's issues and endures constant
threats.
Shakila
Ibrahimkhail is another female journalist
reporting on women’s issues in Afghanistan. Unlike Saqib, who runs the
independent Afghan Women’s News Network, Ibrahimkhail works with Tolo TV, which
is owned by the biggest media company in Afghanistan, Moby.
Ibrahimkhail was the
first reporter to break the story of Sahar Gul, a 15-year-old girl who was sold in marriage by her
brother and tortured by her in-laws because she refused to give in to
prostitution.
Many supported
Ibrahimkhail when she reported that case. Her reporting led to change.
Nonprofis and women’s organizations rallied support for Sahar Gul and placed
her in a safe shelter, where she remains. Then-President Hamid Karzai spoke to
religious leaders about gender-based violence and encouraged them to
speak out against it. And Kabul youth organized protests and campaigns against
violence.
However, when
Ibrahimkhail covered a story on the selling of women in the Shinwaar
district in Nangarhar, her story brought international attention to the issue — and threats to her life.
Many thought her
reporting was an insult to the country and the culture of Afghanistan. She was
called a “Westerner” and a “traitor” among other things. She was followed home
by unknown men who threatened to kill her several times and received dozens of
threatening calls every night. The callers questioned the need to publish this
story and “defame” Afghanistan.
Later, when she reported the gang rape of a woman in Badakhshan by local
“armed criminals” she received threatening phone calls from them. The warlords
who had raped the woman also threatened to kill the rape survivor’s husband,
who was a police officer.
The consistent
threats led the couple to leave Badakhashan and move to the capital city of
Kabul, but the phone calls to Ibrahimkhail continued.
“I usually answered
the phone calls and reasoned with them. I told them why I report these stories
with determination and fearlessly,” Ibrahimkhail said.
Reporting on women’s
issues has not been the only cause of threats for Ibrahimkhail. When she wrote about the government’s incompetency in forming a cabinet
and reported on Afghanistan’s most-watched television on the outrage of people
with the newly established government of Afghanistan, supporters of President
Ashraf Ghani and Vice President Abdul Rashid Doustum harassed her. They wrote
threatening posts about her on social media and tried to hurt her character and
reputation. Many of the women interviewed for this report were afraid of
characterizations that implied they were “loose” women or immoral, as that
could lead to real physical harm.
Ibrahimkhail argues
that those who write about her on social media are “weak and unable to do
anything themselves.” She dismisses messages on social media but knows there
are bigger, more pertinent dangers. When she reported on the killing of a young
municipality worker during a suicide attack, which was widely reported in
Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents and their supporters threatened to kill her.
When she covered government corruption and bribery, top government officials
even slipped her threatening notes.
“There is no security
for female journalists, especially if they cover dangerous territory and
issues,” she says, but for Ibrahimkhail, the harassment, stalking and threats
are a part of her job.
“If you want to fight
for your rights and that of others, you should expect these things. Life is a
struggle. You cannot retreat,” she said.
She argues that if
she stops traveling, writing and reporting, her enemies — the enemies of
progress in her country, she says — will win.
“We will find all
this and continue to do so with more determination. Let them say and write what
they want, make accusations, humiliate us, defame us, threaten us to death and
violate our privacy. Despite all this we will stand together and continue our
work. We will never stop. We will never give in to pressure,” Ibrahimkhail
wrote on her Facebook page after a recent smear campaign against another female
journalist.
Photo courtesy of Khaleda
Khorsand
Writer
and gender-equality activist Khaleda Khorsand is organizing the country's Human
Rights Film Festival.
Khaleda
Khorsand, 30, is a writer and gender-equality activist in
Herat, Afghanistan. In the past she has worked as a journalist for Pajwok, one
of Afghanistan’s oldest news networks, and for BBC Persian. She began working
in media and at aid and other nonprofit organizations while the Taliban was
still in power in Afghanistan. At the time, in addition to reporting, she
attended a women’s underground literary circle called The Golden Needle with
Nadia Anjuman, a poetess who was killed by her husband for writing.
When she began as a
journalist, she was one of the two female journalists in her conservative town.
She regularly faced discrimination at her workplace. When reporting in public,
she faced sexual harassment, and even among other journalists, she was not
treated with respect.
“Sometimes, I was not
even allowed to ask a question in press conferences… after more women joined,
it got better,” she says.
During her earlier
years in journalism, Khorsand reported on the sexual abuse of a young woman by
a religious leader from whom she had sought help. The religious leader was
well-known in Herat. He was wealthy, powerful and widely respected. Khorsand’s
report led to months of harassment and threats.
“He called my husband
and threatened to kill both of us. I did not feel safe for a long time after
that because I knew that the religious leader had a lot of followers,” she said
in a recent interview.
Khorsand was worried
about her own as well as her family’s safety, but she said that leaving
journalism would be a betrayal to the survivor of rape whose story she had
written. Her silence would satisfy the local religious leader and encourage
others to believe that there were no consequences for their crimes, she said.
She continued to report until more women joined newspapers, radios and
television.
Although she left her
job in journalism, Khorsand continues to write. She writes about women’s
issues, participates in the activities of Afghanistan’s Committee for Women’s
Political Participation and advocates for human rights. Aware of the historical
importance of her work, Khorsand continues to work for gender equality in her
hometown. She is among the organizers of Afghanistan’s Human Rights Film
Festival, a national event to highlight human rights issues through art. The
festival has come under attack by religious clerics many times.
Khorsand also
facilitates debates on social and political issues. Among other things, after
she ran a debate on the topic of Islam and secularism in her office, attendees
threatened to kill her while in the debate room. Later, she was followed home
and stalked for a few days. She continues to be threatened because of her work.
“They told everyone
that I had changed my religion and I deserve to be killed,” she said
recently.
The attempts at
character assassination not only create physical dangers for women but also
endangers their social status, Khorsand said. In a society where rumors spread
by men hold real weight, accusations of moral and sexual corruption can lead to
physical violence.
“In addition, the
threat is never only towards the women who are fighting. It impacts and
endangers our children, our husbands, our brothers… because of my work, my
brother could be beaten up, injured, killed or imprisoned,” she says.
Khorsand calls these
threats dangers to one’s “societal (not physical) security” because they
threaten the degree of a woman’s legitimacy. She said she spends a large
portion of her time proving to people that “I am not a prostitute. I have to
keep saying that ‘working outside and working for women’s rights is not
prostitution.’ This is how I spend most of my energy. If I can’t prove that I
am not a prostitute, no one will accept my work or my words.”
She said she feels
unsafe not just among local people, but also is wary of the growing movement of
youth drawn toward extremism. She describes a systematic movement that is
engaging with youth, men and women, who “are taken to Pakistan, taught in
extremist religious madrasas, and brought back to Herat to promote
extremism.”
Khorsand said these
groups work to ensure that women do not participate in public life in ways they
don’t approve as Islamic and require that women cover up in public places. The
trained youth then engage in threatening activist women, running smear
campaigns that put women’s lives in danger, and even violently beat those who
disobey, Khorsand says.
“I have never felt
safe in Afghanistan. I joined this fight because I believe it is my duty to
fight against discrimination and injustice, and I will fight for as long as I
can,” she says.
Khorsand talks about
the struggles of women around the world. Women “were killed, raped, burned” for
asking for their rights in order to guarantee basic human rights to women in
other parts of the world. Afghan women have to do the same, she said.
“Many of us in this
generation are martyrs for the next generation of women,” says Khorsand.
Paradise
Sorouri, 25, is one of Afghanistan’s few female rappers.
She has rapped about gender-based violence, the lives of Afghan refugees, corruption and
war.
Her songs were met with criticism at best and threats at worse. As a result,
she hasn’t been able to leave her house for anything other than infrequent
shopping, concerts and interviews for nearly two years because she fears for
her life.
Another female
rapper, Susan Firoz, has left the country and is now in India because
of lack of safety, according to a report by Afghan Women’s News Agency.
Sorouri’s family
lives in Tajikistan, but she left the country to come to Herat, Afghanistan, so
that she could work in what she calls her homeland and meet her family. One of
her first songs, Sadaye Zan ("Women’s Voice"), is about violence
against women. She sang it while she was residing in Herat, a relatively conservative
area of Afghanistan. The video showed her with a bloodied face singing about
women’s ownership over their own bodies. She called on women to unite and to
stop marrying men who won’t respect them.
Many were not ready
for her voice.
In 2008, she was
accepted into a private university in Herat, but on the way to school on her
first day, a young man physically attacked her in front of the door of the
university for singing and having a boyfriend.
When she approached
the guard of the university, he told her, “Get lost. I don’t not want to see
you here ever again.”
When she continued to
attend the university, the threats increased. The neighbors advised her not to
leave the house without a male chaperone. During one commute, Sorouri took her
10-year-old brother with her. This time, more than 10 men, most on motorcycles,
beat her and her brother. “We tried to hit them back,” but it was of no use,
she said.
Because having a
boyfriend is not acceptable in many Afghan communities, she had told everyone
that they were engaged but this did not prevent violence. One evening, around 7
p.m., when Sorouri and her boyfriend were out, a group of men beat them and
threatened to kill them next time they leave the house.
“I was shaking the
entire time. They were 10 men, and we were two people. The only thing I was
thinking of was gang rape or killing. They told us they would kill us so we ran
away,” she said.
In Herat, Sorouri was
not able to go to school or attend her job so she moved to Kabul, which is
thought of as more progressive and open to women’s work.
Things were difficult
for Sorouri even after moving to Kabul. When she performed at concerts and gave
interviews to the national and international media, the local mosque spoke
against her and “riled up the neighborhood.”
“One of the neighbors
came to my house and called me to the door. He then told me that I should
either leave the neighborhood or stop singing and giving interviews if I want
to stay safe. I was very scared. He raised his hand to hit me when I spoke up,
but after throwing a few more insults, he left,” she says.
Sorouri continues to
perform and was recently honored by the Rumi Music Awards, a national awards
show. After the ceremony, she said she was threatened because she was “wearing Western clothes.”
“Mainstream and
social media exploded like a bomb. Public pages on Facebook threatened to kill
me. Noorin TV, a religious media, as well as many others threatened to mobilize
youth to stop me from singing. It seemed as if nothing mattered as much as what
I wearing,” she says.
After the Rumi
awards, Sorouri was terrified. She did not complain to the government because
she said, “I don’t think they care about me.” She did not leave her home until
the public slowly began to forget the awards.
Still, Sorouri thinks
that things are getting better and more people are beginning to show support.
She said her fan base is expanding, as people are thirsty for new music.
“I am happy that I am
in Afghanistan because slowly people are realizing the importance of struggle
towards our music. There are people who know me and respect me. I wouldn’t have
this in another country,” she says.
But she is torn.
During her last filming in a crowded area in Kabul, a young man named Kote
Sangi pulled a knife on her after she, her boyfriend and her brother spoke out
against a street harasser.
“Every minute of my
life in Kabul, I am scared. I don’t leave the house more than once a month,”
she says.
But Sorouri said she
will not give up, that her music is a force for change. The Taliban use
non-instrumental vocal music to propagate their views among people. The
Mujahidin hired local musicians to sing songs and write poetry to make them
more popular. Why can’t the movement for progress, democracy and equality be
supported by song, she asks.
Sonita
Alizada, 18, is an Afghan rapper who has lived most of her
life as an undocumented immigrant in Iran, where legal restrictions have kept her family and other Afghans from
being recognized.
Like millions of
other Afghan refugees, she was also prohibited from attending Iranian schools or universities. She
left Afghanistan before receiving a national ID card and for most of her life,
was neither a registered Afghan nor an Iranian.
Before our recent
interview, she was planning to travel to Afghanistan; once there, she was able
to get an Afghan passport for the first time.
When Alizada began
singing a year ago, her family told her she was “betraying the moral
code.”
“Girls don’t sing,”
they said, and they tried to prevent her from going to the underground studio
where, with the help of an Iranian organization, she is recording.
Alizada sang about
being a refugee and also about racism in Iran, child labor, war, elections and
democracy in Afghanistan. More recently, she has recorded songs
about child and forced
marriage.
Her family members
were not the only ones who had hoped to silence Alizada. It has been illegal for women to sing solo in Iran for 30 years. Getting
caught while recording or being known for singing could have many consequences
for Alizada and others like her, but the most certain one would be imprisonment
in jails notoriously known for violence, torture and rape. Alizada is among the few women in Iran who are able to
record in underground studios.
“If I am caught,
really terrible things could happen to me, especially because I am singing
political and social songs,” she said.
Both her Afghan
community and the Iranian government have been unsupportive: Alizada gave
shelter to her sister and her child because her brother-in-law was violent and
attempted to sell the 9-year-old daughter. When the brother-in-law discovered
that Alizada had provided cover for his wife and child, he threatened to kill
her, then attempted to do so by pouring gasoline on her and lighting her on
fire.
“Drenched in
gasoline, I went to the police station. The authorities told me that I was
undocumented and an Afghan and they couldn’t do anything about my situation.
‘This is none of our business,’ they said,” says Alizada.
Soon after, at the
police office, the brother-in-law arrived. Enraged, he told the police officer
that Alizada is a female singer who raps against the Iranian government.
“The police stopped
asking him about trying to light me on fire and began interrogating me for
singing political songs. In addition they said ‘You are a female singer. That
is illegal in Iran,’” Alizada said.
But the in-law did
not have access to Alizada’s songs and could not provide any proof, so Alizada
was set free with a warning. Then the brother-in-law found her at a desolate
corner of town and beat her with bricks. This time, she did not go to the
police.
After a few songs,
Alizada became more known in Afghanistan and among certain circles in Iran. The
fame and support led to increased support among her family, she said.
She brought copies of
her songs and had them listen to them; they realized the songs were about their
shared pain. Her family encouraged her, she said, but the support did not
last.
Alizada’s family was
adamant about selling her in marriage in exchange for nearly $9,000. Her
marriage would have probably prevented her from singing in the future and ended
her budding career. Though they were not able to provide the entire sum of the
money, a center dedicated to supporting Afghan refugee children was able to pay
some money to Alizada’s family to delay the marriage.
“The marriage has not
been canceled. It has just been delayed,” an official from the center, who did
not want to be named, said.
Alizada is dedicated
to singing political and socially aware songs, and she also dreams of more
educational opportunities. To this end, she has been able to secure a
scholarship at a private music school in the United States.
“I have things that need to be told to more than one or two people. I want everyone to hear me. I want to become a well-known rapper and give concerts in Afghanistan. I want to help other children and youth who have lived through what I have,” Alizada said.