La Voz de Galicia – July 28, 2023 →
It seems that this week women’s beauty salons closed in Afghanistan. That the authorities forbade them, and that, according to the spokesman for the Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, this week security forces in Kabul made sure that the prohibition is enforced. A few months ago, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution condemning the Taliban’s discrimination against women in Afghanistan, urging the Taliban to «rapidly reverse the policies that restrict (…) access to education, employment, freedom of movement and participation in public life.» But things continue to advance down the darkest possible road in a country where the fundamental human rights and freedoms of women and girls are almost nonexistent.
And looking at the media, I wonder which are the reasons for which in this reality in which we live, we decide to pay more attention to the injustices in one part of the world forgetting about the ones in another part of the world. I wonder why in some cases we look away and in others we become involved as if they occurred around us even though they are happening equally far away. I wonder who chooses these priorities for us, and why these priorities, because it is important to be informed about the atrocities that are happening.
As the activist Maryam Rayed said: «What happened in Afghanistan is a lesson to the world: that progress in women’s rights is fragile everywhere.» And one can’t stop feeling the terrible impotence of knowing/thinking that these same women who yesterday had a life, goals and ambitions, today are erased from society, and who fights for them?
