Kabul: One woman is serving 12 years in prison for being a rape victim. The second is in jail for running from an abusive husband. Both say they want to tell their stories, and yet a film about their plight has been scrapped, sparking controversy about how committed the international community is to fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan.
The documentary, In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail, was commissioned by the European Union, which has now decided not to release it. The EU says the two women in the film would be in danger if it were shown. But critics say politics is also at work and accuse the EU of abandoning a women’s rights project for fear it could damage its relationship with the Afghan government.
The documentary, In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail, was commissioned by the European Union, which has now decided not to release it. Representational image. Reuters.
The film tells a disturbing tale. One of the women profiled is a 19-year-old who was raped and impregnated by a cousin. She was not married and got a 12-year sentence for having sex out of wedlock, a crime in Afghanistan. The judge told her she could get out of prison if she agreed to marry her rapist, who bribed his way out of jail. She refused. She gave birth to her daughter in prison and now expects that she will have to raise her there.
“There’s a huge number of these cases coming into the prisons,” said Heather Barr, a Human Rights Watch researcher working on a report on women in prison in Afghanistan. Some of the most severe restrictions women faced under the Taliban, like a ban on attending schools and a compulsory male escort while venturing outside the home, were done away with when the radical Islamic movement was driven from power in 2001.
Afghanistan, however, remains a deeply conservative and male-dominated society, meaning women are still sold to husbands and rights enshrined in law are often ignored in practice. About half of the 300-400 women jailed in Afghanistan are imprisoned for so-called “moral crimes” such as sex outside marriage, or running away from their husbands, according to reports by the UN and research organisations, even though the latter is not even a crime under Afghan law.
AP