22
May
Women, Casualties of the Law in Afghanistan
by Rosalind Adams
0 Comments | Posted by thatgirl in Making Waves
Recently, a law was passed in Afghanistan that immediately caused outrage in the global community. President Obama has called the law “abhorrent” and the United Nations has also called for its review. Named the Shia Family Law, the legislation essentially rolls back the rights of Shi’ite women in the country.
The Shia Family Law is a series of provisions which govern family life among the Shi’ite sect of Islam. One of the most severe aspects of the law is its legalization of marital rape. Husbands are granted the ability to demand sex from their wives every four days. Husbands may also force their wives to wear make-up and dress up, and even restrict them from having a job or receiving an education (in a country where many of the women are already illiterate). Under these laws, Shi’ite women are reduced to little more than mere possessions.
Interestingly, this law singles out Shi’ites, who still make up six million of the people in Afghanistan. While in the U.S, there exists a separation of church and state, Afghanistan is a heavily Islamic country where religion is integral to their constitution and government. Islam is the supreme law of the land (even civil law may not transgress Islamic beliefs) and concessions are made for certain sects of Islam, including Shia. This permits some laws to govern Shi’ite only relations.
In early April, Afghani President Hamid Karzai responded to the protests of other countries, saying he would examine the law again, but little has been done since then. In August, the president is up for re-election, and many feel he has signed this law in order to gain the votes of the Shi’ite sect, needed for a victory. Presidents serve a five-year term in Afghanistan and are elected by a direct vote of the people (Karzai is the only president who has served a term in this nascent democracy).
Karzai pushed the law through both houses of the Parliament, and many of the regular legal processions did not take place. One MP admitted that the law was not even read aloud in the upper house of Parliament. The law was also passed as a package, instead of being passed article by article as is customary (there are well over a hundred articles to the law). A more detailed examination may have halted some of the more extreme provisions from passing into law, considering Afghanistan is one of the world’s leaders in female political representation, with about 28% of their Parliament being women (the Afghanistan constitution requires that 25% of representatives are female).
An interesting turn of events came just a couple of weeks ago when about 200 Afghan women took to the streets themselves, marching to Parliament with a signed petition against the law. The women were greeted by many more angry counter demonstrators, screaming “whores!” at them. One thing is quite clear here though: even Afghan women will not stand for these laws. This is not simply a matter of a cultural difference. This is a purely political move and the livelihood of Shi’ite women is being sacrificed in the process.
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It’s not everyday you see women being slapped, pummeled, and yanked by the hair by men in broad daylight. But such recent events in Mangalore, India at a bar called Amnesia: The Lounge are being justified by some groups who call the violence “moral policing.” Whether a global audience agrees or disagrees with the justification is not the biggest issue here, whether or not the world, or India in this case, is ready for the modern female, however, is.
Shri Ram Sena, a radical wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, claimed responsibility for the January 29 attacks on young woman inside and outside the bar. Several women were assaulted and two were pushed to the ground outside according to a video posted by journalists for Daijiworld, Mangalore’s first internet TV.
Kuldip Nayar, a New Delhi-based journalist and political analyst acknowledged that tradition hasn’t been entirely abandoned in India and the “class of people going to pubs, dancing, is still very small.” Isn’t a comparison with the Afghani Taliban a bit harsh for the Shri Ram Sena group? They claim to only be protecting morality, after all. But here lies the double standard.
The key component of these violent acts was that women were the main victims, not a whole “class.” The fact that the women were attacked for doing what was seen as normal in Bollywood movies suggest the society may be moving forward faster than its culture. The culture is lagging behind its so-called image. I, myself, have seen countless Bollywood movies with women drinking in a bar – Dostana and Kal Ho Naa Ho, for example. Why does pop culture promote one modern lifestyle while the public condemns it?
Nirmala Venkatesh, a member of the central government’s National Commission for Women, had a suggestion for Indian women. In her opinion, women can enjoy themselves freely, but need to “recognize societal limits,” she said.
What one can infer from Venkatesh’s response is that women in India need to maintain a balance in today’s India. Yes, the country is moving forward rapidly in one sector, but perhaps other areas like culture will take more time. The idea is valid and perhaps women should keep this in mind. After all, who is to say wanting tradition and “morality” is wrong? But why is it that throughout the world’s history, freedom for female modernization has taken extra time?
“I feel caught between two worlds,” said Tina Chopra in an LA Times article, 21, a college student. “At home, it’s the old traditional India. When I go out, it’s the new India. . . . I’m like two separate people.”
Some view the acts against women at a bar in Mangalore as solely political. Regardless, it is still telling of a gender conflict. Why was violence towards women chosen as the political act? Why were women at a bar attacked? Conservative and liberal are two ways of approaching tradition. However, when women get caught in that crossfire it reveals more than just a political rivalry, but the repeatedly told story that societies modernize before allowing their women to.
Going through my morning email routine, I surfed over to my oft-neglected MySpace account to see what was shaking. The featured video of the day was a National Geographic segment on the famed northern Longneck tribes of Thailand, which I had visited several months ago on a journey across Southeast Asia.
These refugees from Burma practice wrapping golden rings around the female tribe members’ necks from very young ages as a part of a long-lived tribal tradition. During the 1960s when Burma was taken over by a communist military junta, tribal people were persecuted and forced to migrate to Northern Thailand where they now reside in refugee camps. Because of their aesthetically unconventional practices, the Paduang and the Karen are some of the most famous of these tribes.
What’s most disturbing about the NG video is that they glorify these tribal villages, as if they are purely a form of cultural preservation and a means of monetary uplift for the refugees. The reality is that these camps are more like enforced labor camps or zoos, and tourists blindly participate in the sustentation of these blatant forms of female captivity.
There are different accounts of why the Padaung practice the longneck customs. Their mythology explains the practice prevents tigers from biting them. Others contend that the custom is enforced to make the women less attractive to potential slave traders. The most common explanation, though, is the opposite. It is said that an extra-long neck is a sign of beauty and wealth that will attract a better husband. The practice forces a woman’s collar bone to collapse, the ribcage caves in, gradually presenting an illusion of an extremely long neck. According to the NG video, for these women, “Pain is a requirement of belonging.”
While I was in Mae Hong Son, a small village in North Western Thailand, I went to check out these longneck camps. The town of Mae Hong Son is itsy-bitsy in its own right, but it took a good twenty minute ride on my motorbike to reach the distant refugee camp.
Chugging up the hill, I rode alongside male farmers carrying rice back up from the fields. Young boys carried bags of grain atop their heads that looked like they weighed as much as the young kids themselves. They proceeded on to a second gate, where it seemed that only men and children could go.
The Karen longneck “exhibit” (I call it such because this is really a zoo-like environment.) was the gate to the left. In order to enter, you have to pay the equivalent of US $15, which is an absolutely obscene amount of cash in Thailand. It would be like paying a c-note to get into LACMA. I didn’t want to pay the fee, as I knew that the majority of this money would be given to the Thai government and not the refugees, but after reading so much about the plight of these tribal people, I had to see for myself what the fuss was over.
It was shocking. Upon walking in, there was absolute silence. A dirt path leads you through a tourist shopping village, where you can purchase bracelets and trinkets that were clearly made in China. Women call out slightly subdued voices “You like to buy a bracelet, miss?” They are on the prowl for business.
There’s a Christian church inside the small Karen village, which shockingly is part of the reason why the Karen were kicked out of Burma in the first place. According to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, 27,000 Karen Christians were kicked out during the military overthrow.
In this small “village,” there’s a schoolhouse with some math written on the chalkboard, but it’s 11 a.m. and not a single child is in sight. A few homes are open to peer into, but this place is a ghost town. There’s no one but the longneck women around.
The Karen women still practice an intricate form of weaving, and they sell their wares as well. In the end I purchased a scarf from one of the women, hoping that in directly buying something she had made, some of the money might actually go to her family as opposed to the Thai government.
A bit overwhelmed from this whole experience, I decided to have a sit down at the little snack shack located outside the refugee camp. While there, I met two young Karen women, around the ages of 18, who opened up and shed some insight into the situation.
One of them had cut off the rings in order to move to the camp next door. “I wanted to go to school and learn English. If you have rings, you cannot learn and there is no way out.” She went on to tell me how the “Thai government does not allow the tribal women to go into Mae Hong Son, because if tourists see the Karen women there, they will not travel up the here (and pay the admittance fee).”
I began to feel a bit queasy. This young woman, who has seen so much pain, whose family has such a rich history, has sacrificed so much for an education. She speaks with such conviction in a language that is not her own, yet she may never get off of the mountain where she lives. She has dreams of teaching, of someday seeing a town outside of Mae Hong Son. Travel outside of the country is completely impossible, as they are neither citizens of Burma nor Thailand, and therefore have no visa.
She asked me how I knew about the Karen, and I responded, “Through National Geographic photographs.” But had I not spoken to her or seen the place for myself, I don’t think I would have understood the real severity of the situation within her tribe. All I had was the Lonely Planet’s nonchalant warning and some photos I saw in NG when I was 13. Now things seemed a lot clearer.
On the ride home, I began to think about the universal plight of tribal people worldwide. They all seem to have such a rich history, a deeper connection with the spiritual world, a stronghold on the meaning of community, yet they are always the first ones pushed out when it comes to modernizing and “civilizing” society. Yet their strength seems to prevail.
I was very lucky to have the opportunity to speak to some of these Burmese tribal women, but the sad reality is that most people solely rely on video feeds such as the one I saw this morning for their cultural intake, which is why situations like that of the Karen go vastly unnoticed. My advice: travel as much as you can, and be open to the locals in far-flung locales. The experience and knowledge you will obtain is invaluable.