Afghan women protest wearing shrouds: “We are dying but the world is silent”

By Rukhshana Media 

A group of women protested in the Afghan capital on Tuesday, wearing funeral shrouds to illustrate their wretched lives under the Taliban.

The protest took place in an indoor space, but the local media were not invited as the protesters feared such an invitation would alert the Taliban, one of the organizers told Rukhshana Media.

As the Taliban have suppressed women’s protests on several occasions and have beaten journalists who covered them, many women protesters have been forced indoors.

But finding a venue is not easy. 

“No one was willing to give us a place, [but] finally one of our members offered her workplace as the venue,” said Sudaba Kabiri, one of the organizers of the protest.

“We wore a shroud to say that Afghan women are dying, but the world is silent,” Kabiri said in a phone interview on Wednesday. 

The protest was organized by a group called the “Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women Fighters” and protesters wore white shrouds and tri-colour headscarves in the green, red and black of the Afghan flag.

“This time we wanted to protest differently by wearing a shroud because the aspiration and goal of a nation [for the future] are dying,” said Zakia Jamshidpour, one of the participants. “Women can not study, work and express themselves freely. The Taliban have deprived Afghan women of their human rights,” she told Rukhshana Media.

“The spell of silence must be broken in the face of oppression,” Jamshidpour added. 

On Saturday a press conference planned by the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women Fighters in response to the Taliban’s first decree on women’s rights was cancelled when the Taliban reportedly threatened the librarian of the library they chose as venue, according to conference organizers. 

The Taliban leader issued the group’s first decree on women’s rights on Friday, which banned forced marriage but made no mention of a woman’s right to education and work, two crucial demands at the heart of women’s protests in the country.