The news this week has been bad for supporters of women’s rights in at least three parts of the world. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that Israeli newspapers “aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers” digitally manipulated a photograph of the new Israeli government, to remove two female cabinet ministers, Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver. The photograph was taken at an official ceremony welcoming the new Israeli leadership on Wednesday at the residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres.
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Reuters reports that the woman was 17 years old and describes the scene shown in the video:
Grainy footage apparently shot with a mobile phone camera shows militants making the burka-clad girl lie on the ground on her stomach. One man holds her feet and another her head while a third man with a black beard and turban flogs her with a leather strap. Men can be seen looking on.
“For God’s sake, stop it … hang on, hang on,” the girl cries as the man beats her across the buttocks.
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All this comes just days after human rights groups expressed concern at a new law in Afghanistan that they say may severely curtail the rights of some women in the country.
As Reuters reported on Thursday, “The new law passed by Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, but not yet promulgated in the official gazette, is meant to legalize minority Shiite family law, which is different than that for the majority Sunni population.”
Jon Boone reported in The Guardian on Wednesday that there was some confusion around the exact provisions of the bill, and that election-year considerations might be at work:
The Afghan constitution allows for Shias, who are thought to represent about 10% of the population, to have a separate family law based on traditional Shia jurisprudence. But the constitution and various international treaties signed by Afghanistan guarantee equal rights for women.
Shinkai Zahine Karokhail, like other female parliamentarians, complained that after an initial deal the law was passed with unprecedented speed and limited debate. “They wanted to pass it almost like a secret negotiation,” she said. “There were lots of things that we wanted to change, but they didn’t want to discuss it because Karzai wants to please the Shia before the election.”
Mr. Boone adds that “the final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands’ permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands’ permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex.”
An Afghan lawmaker, Sayed Hussain Alem Balkhi, who was involved in debating the bill in Parliament, told Reuters that reports about the law were “propaganda,” and claimed that in fact it enshrined certain freedoms for Shiite women, including the right to leave her house “for medical treatment” and “to see her parents without the permission of her husband.”
In Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, issued a statement on Thursday urging “the Afghan Government to rescind” the new law. Ms. Pillay added that “for a new law in 2009 to target women in this way is extraordinary, reprehensible and reminiscent of the decrees made by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s.”
Update | 7:42 p.m. As the week has gone on, pressure has mounted on Afghanistan to review the new law. The Guardian’s Julian Borger reported on Wednesday that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the issue of this new law directly with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at a meeting this week:
Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, came under intense western pressure yesterday to scrap a new law that the UN said legalised rape within marriage and severely limited the rights of women.
At a conference on Afghanistan in The Hague, Scandinavian foreign ministers publicly challenged the Afghan leader to respond to a report on the new law in yesterday’s Guardian, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, was reported to have confronted Karzai on the issue in a private meeting.
At a press conference after the meeting, Clinton made clear US displeasure at the apparent backsliding on women’s rights. “This is an area of absolute concern for the United States. My message is very clear. Women’s rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration,” she said.
The Associated Press reported the next day that:
Robert Wood, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday that the United States was “very concerned” about the law. “We urge President Karzai to review the law’s legal status to correct provisions of the law that limit or restrict women’s rights,” he said.