BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN
The women of Afghanistan should look to the example of their counterparts in Canada as they fight for equal status, says journalist and human rights activist Sally Armstrong.
Armstrong was the guest speaker at the LEAF Person’s Day Breakfast at the Great Hall at Laurentian University Friday (today).
“There’s a very serious link there. What the women of Afghanistan are going through now is a version of what Canadian women went through many years ago,” she told Northern Life in a telephone interview before the LEAF event.
“But right now there isn’t language to describe the size of the difference between where Canadian women are and where the women of Afghanistan are.”
The LEAF Breakfast celebrates the anniversary of the day in 1929 when Canadian women were deemed persons in court. Past speakers include Ann Medina, the Hon. Hilary Weston and Ann Dowsett Johnson. LEAF is an organization that pays for ground-breaking legal battles involving women.
Armstrong spoke at the breakfast several years ago about Afghanistan when few people had even heard of the Taliban. With Afghanistan now in the daily headlines, she was asked to make a return visit.
Armstrong is the author of a book called Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan, and has produced several documentaries about Afghanistan.
She first visited Afghanistan in March 1997 about six months after the Taliban, a strict Islamic regime, took power in the country. At the time, she was the editor-in-chief of Homemakers magazine. After her story was printed, the magazine received about 9,000 letters from readers shocked about what was happening to the women of Afghanistan.
The Taliban forced women to wear the burqa, a long cloak-like piece of clothing covering almost all of their skin, and were deprived of basic education.
In 2001, a coalition of armed forces led by the United States invaded Afghanistan and threw the Taliban out of power. But Taliban fighters have since launched an insurgency to regain control parts of the country, killing many civilians and coalition soldiers.
“In Kabul, the capital city, things are marginally better now. In some areas, there is a slight improvement. But generally speaking, throughout the country, there is not enough change. Things are not better,” says Armstrong.
“The people who want to perpetrate the kind of violence we see in Afghanistan claim they are doing it in the name of God. That is not so. What they have done is hijacked their own religion for political opportunism, and that’s a disgrace.
“What the Taliban will say to you that what’s happening to the women of Afghanistan is cultural. Any knowledgable person would say is what’s happening to the women of Afghanistan is criminal, and it’s time it was ended.”
