.... A government mission sent to investigate the problem [women burning themselves to death because of forced marriages] in Herat, the capital of western Afghanistan, reported that at least 52 young married or soon-to-be married women had burned themselves to death in recent months. The youngest was a bride-to-be of just 13.
Mr [Nazir] Shah says he knows of more than 80 cases of self-immolation in western Fara province, where his daughter took her life, in the past two years. "There is not a village in Fara where a young woman has not burned herself to death."
Self-immolation has an unsavoury place in the history of several Asian countries, as a traditional form of female suicide, but in Afghanistan it is borne out of despair rather than cultural imperative and is on the increase. Behind the increase, says Amina Safi Afzali of the Afghan Human Rights Commission, is a deep disillusionment by many educated women because the two years since the Taleban’s fall have brought little freedom. That is felt most keenly among former refugees in Iran, who had grown accustomed to a freer life there. Significantly, most of the female suicides recorded in Herat, close to Afghanistan’s border with Iran, were of educated women.
"There are many more pressures on young Afghan women today, because they have learned what freedom is from radio and television, but that is not what they have," Ms Afzali said. "In the past, every girl knew she belonged to her family, she existed only for her father and her husband: she knew she wasn’t free. Now, young girls know they should have rights, and they are prepared to burn themselves to show society that they do not have them yet." ....
"Women in this country are in a very bad situation, with forced marriages, families selling their daughters to pay drug debts, women being beaten all the time," said the deputy women’s minister, Suraya Sobah Rang. "We have to change these things in our society. But what society wants, and what women want are two different things." .... |