Culture Clashes or Savagery?

Afghanistan is a signatory state of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as is Pakistan. Yet the news that a young bride was decapitated after refusing to prostitute herself in the former country comes hot on the heels of an acid attack against a bus full of schoolgirls in the latter. How sporadic or widespread are these practices?

Afghanistan is a signatory state of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1), as is Pakistan. Yet the news that a young bride was decapitated after refusing to prostitute herself in the former country comes hot on the heels of an acid attack against a bus full of schoolgirls in the latter. Both acts run against any code of criminal law and reach the depths of human depravity. But then again, so does supporting terrorists, arming thugs who then run amok looting, killing, torturing and murdering, and so does running concentration camps where prisoners are set upon by dogs, urinated on, sodomised and systematically tortured.

In Herat, Afghanistan, last week a 25-year-old newlywed woman was decapitated by her husband's family because she repeatedly refused to sleep with other men in return for money. The girl's name was Mahgul. True, the perpetrators have been arrested. True, hundreds of women's rights activists demonstrated outside the local police station and true, most Afghans abhor such behaviour.

Yet this horrific incident is one of a long list of killings and outrages against the integrity of women. Only last month, also in Herat (western Afghanistan), a 30-year-old woman was murdered, her nose, ears and fingers torn off. In fact, human rights activists list at least seven hundred cases of violence against women only in Herat (2).

A lot of cases go unreported and the violence, including mutilation and torture, is increasing. But it is not only in Afghanistan. In neighbouring Pakistan, also a signatory state to the UDHR, acid was thrown at a school bus taking girls to school by the local Taleban movement. This is also the latest in a string of attacks against girls to stop them "getting a western education".

These are not cultural expressions, they are impositions from one group or organization against the population in general, based on nothing more than prejudice. When it comes to Female Genital Mutilation, we are speaking not necessarily about prejudice but also about the imposition from those who wish to follow traditions on those not old enough to choose.

Moving westwards, we have countries banning the shador, niqab, khimar and the burqah. Impositions again. While there is a difference between mutilating people to stop them going to school, mutilating them to stop them having an orgasm and not allowing them to reveal themselves only to their husbands, which is their birthright, what difference does it make to pontificate upon such issues when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is yet another of the international Agreements not worth the paper it is written on?

Let us be honest, if NATO in general and the FUKUS Axis (France, UK, US) in particular, can trash the UN Charter, breach the Geneva Conventions and break every rule in the book, and go unpunished, not one of its politicians or soldiers arriving in the dock despite indictments such as this (3), then let us not be patronising about "atrocities" committed by "savages" in Afghanistan.

After all, who destabilised the only socially progressive government the country had in the 1970s?

Until international law is implemented, across the board, we may as well admit that at the turn of the Third Millennium, it does not exist.

(1)   http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

(2)   Herat - Department of Women's Affairs, Afghanistan

(3)   http://english.pravda.ruhttps://english.pravda.ru/opinion/119534-indictment_nato/

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru