The shocking level of physical violence against women allowed under the Taliban’s new laws has been revealed this week by the case of a woman in northern Afghanistan, who said her husband beat her with a cable and a judge told her: “Do you want a divorce just for that?… A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you.”
Farzana* said her husband was irascible and often resorted to hitting her. He periodically humiliated her and called her “handicapped,” according to her, because her right leg was a little shorter than her left. She had tolerated the abuse for the sake of her children, but one night, she said, his violence went too far.
“One day he was very sick and didn’t have the energy to make dinner. When he came home from work, he said to me, ‘Now don’t you even do housework?’ I told him I was sick, but he hit me with the cell phone charger cable. The marks on my back and arms remained for several days, but I didn’t think to take photographs that could one day help me in court.”
After the attack, she decided to seek an end to the violence by filing for divorce, but when her case recently reached a Taliban court, Farzana said the judge not only rejected her request but belittled her claims of abuse.
“When I said that he constantly beats me and humiliates me and insults me, and that I want a divorce, the judge asked, ‘Do you want a divorce just for that? Don’t you have another reason?'” When Farzana went on to describe the attack she had recently suffered, she said the judge asked her if she had evidence of the abuse.
“When I said no, he said, ‘You were young and you enjoyed your husband. Now that he is getting old, you are making excuses to divorce him so you can marry someone else. Go back, you have a good husband, live with him. A little anger and a few beatings won’t kill you. Islam allows a man to beat his wife if she disobeys him, to discipline her. Go and don’t ask for divorce because of those things again.'”
Shaharzad Akbar, director of the human rights organization Rawadari, said such cases are now commonplace in Afghanistan. Women had to live with domestic violence or seek justice in Taliban courts, she said, “where they are often lectured and sent back to the same abusive homes or, worse, punished for ‘disobeying’ their husbands.”
Women’s rights activists, UN experts and lawyers have long argued that the conditions imposed on Afghan women, including bans on attending schools, most jobs and public speaking, amount to gender apartheid.
But a new penal code submitted to the courts last year – and published in January – has gone further by allowing violence against women and preventing them from seeking justice. Under the code, men can hit their wives as long as they do not use “obscene force,” defined as causing visible fractures, wounds or bruises, which the wife must prove in court. For this crime a man can be sentenced to only 15 days in prison. Akbar said the code gave husbands a “license for domestic violence and punishments, short of breaking bones.”
Speaking about the code at the UN this week, Malala Yousafzai, a Nobel laureate, said: “This is not culture. It is not religion. It is a system of segregation and domination. We must call Afghanistan’s regime by its true name: gender apartheid.”
After the court verdict, Farzana said she was forced to return to her husband, who had now become more violent than before. “He tells me: ‘Either you endure it or you die.’ He doesn’t even allow me to go to my father’s house.” The judge also told Farzana that she could not object to her husband taking a second wife.
UN Women Special Representative in Afghanistan Susan Ferguson said: “If we allow Afghan women and girls to be silenced – and punished simply for being women – we send the message that the rights of women and girls everywhere are disposable, and that is an immensely dangerous precedent.”
*Name has been changed
