Tópico: Malalai Joya: heroína afegã defende o país contra os tiranos

[Buckaroo Banzai]

From The Sunday Times
July 5, 2009


Malalai Joya: the woman MP who dares to defy Afghanistan’s warlord rulers
She has survived five assassination attempts, been suspended from parliament and forced into hiding, but Joya refuses to be silent



My father always said he could spot me in any crowd of women wearing burqas because I walk like a penguin. You have no peripheral vision because of the netting in front of your eyes — and it’s hot and suffocating under there.

The most useful thing about these long blue robes is that you can hide schoolbooks and other forbidden objects beneath them. Under the Taliban I also appreciated the anonymity of the burqa when I had to walk to and from the illicit lessons I gave for girls. Today, however, I don’t feel safe under the thickest veil, even though I have armed guards. My visitors are searched for weapons and even the flowers at my wedding had to be checked for bombs.  [...]

I’m the youngest member of the Afghan parliament, but I’ve been threatened repeatedly with death because I speak the truth about the warlords and criminals in the puppet government of President Hamid Karzai. Having survived at least five assassination attempts, I’m forced to live like a fugitive, moving every night to stay ahead of my enemies.

For the 31 years I’ve been alive, my country has suffered from constant war. After September 11, 2001, many of us thought that — with the overthrow of the Taliban — we might finally see some light. But we’re still faced with a foreign occupation and a government filled with warlords who are just as bad as the Taliban.

Afghan women like me, who vote and run for office, have been held up as proof that we enjoy democracy and women’s rights. It’s a lie. In Afghanistan, killing a woman is like killing a bird. We remain caged, without access to justice, and still ruled by women-hating criminals. [...]

War is all that most young Afghans have ever known. Within a year of my birth we were occupied by the Russians — and one of my earliest memories is of policemen ransacking our house, looking for my father. An educated man and a democrat, he lost a leg fighting the Soviet occupiers.

I was still very young when we set out for Quetta, in western Pakistan, where my father sent me to a progressive boarding school at seven. By the time I was 15 I was teaching Afghan women in refugee camps how to read.

At the age of 20 I was back in Afghanistan, holding clandestine classes for girls. Five years on, after the fall of the Taliban, I was director of a medical clinic in Farah province and also running an orphanage. It was while I was doing this that I was chosen by women in my district as their representative in the new Afghan assembly, the loya jirga.

All the stops had been pulled out in Kabul for a big show of democracy, with much talk of the “new Afghanistan”. It was clear to me, however, that the old Afghanistan hadn’t gone away. Some of the warlord delegates to the loya jirga were among the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known. And they were seated in the first row. Nor did anyone seem to mind the presence of Abdul Rab al-Rasul Sayyaf, the man who had invited Osama Bin Laden to Afghanistan and trained Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

The voices of the countless widows who’d told me of their suffering rang in my ears. It was terrible enough to hear about these men and their crimes, but seeing them in person was like torture. [...]

Many in the huge tent where we were meeting applauded, but most of the warlords glowered at me with faces as hard as stone. I went on: “It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again.”

By now a number of the warlords were on their feet, yelling and shaking their fists in my direction.

“They should be prosecuted in the national and international courts,” I said. Then, suddenly, I could no longer hear my voice echoing over the PA system: the chairman had cut off my microphone.

There was an enormous commotion, with angry men lurching in my direction. One of the female delegates started shouting: “Take the pants off this prostitute and tie them on her head!” In the midst of the pandemonium, a widow called Ayeesha grabbed me and shielded me with her body. She knew the depravities of which these angry men were capable.

My supporters and a group of United Nations facilitators huddled around me, arms locked, to protect me as they escorted me through the mob that was still screaming insults and threats. That night, a group of people came looking for me at the university residence where I was staying. Carrying sticks and screaming insults, they demanded: “Where is that prostitute girl? When we find her, we will rape her and kill her!”

Subsequently there were several attempts to kill me. A huge roadside bomb, for example, exploded just ahead of my car, spattering debris onto its roof. Once, a man who claimed to be one of my former bodyguards asked to see me after I’d delivered a speech — but was found to have a concealed pistol. [...]

In 2005 I decided to stand in Afghanistan’s first parliamentary elections in 33 years. My enemies spared no effort to block me, distributing leaflets that called me a “prostitute”, “anti-Islamic”, and a “communist”. One had a photo of me with the doubly false slogan: “She took off her scarf at the loya jirga, she’ll take off her pants in parliament.”

My enemies failed: I became the youngest member of parliament. Afterwards I learnt that many of those who’d voted for me had been beaten — or worse. An 18-year-old called Ibrahim who’d campaigned for me very effectively was abducted and killed. His eyes had been gouged out, probably while he was alive.

Once again many warlords forced their way into the government. I shouldn’t have been surprised that when it was my turn to speak in the new parliament the sound was again cut off.

Indeed, I have never once had the chance to speak — my microphone has always been cut off. And I was constantly attacked and insulted by other MPs.

But, sometimes, even among those who work for fundamentalists, there are people who quietly support me. In one case I was tipped off by one of my would-be assassins. The house where I was living in Kabul was a two-storey building next to a construction site — and my bedroom window was deemed safe because it looked out onto the works. One day, however, a man notified my bodyguards that they shouldn’t allow me to use that room. He was one of three men, he said, who’d been assigned to monitor me from the building under construction. They had a rifle with a silencer and orders to shoot me when I entered the room. [...]

Halim, the father of two children, age six and seven, had accused local commanders of being criminals. They retaliated by sending their gunmen to abduct and murder his children. Their bodies were thrown into a river. Halim said he’d told Karzai his story. “I showed him pictures of my sons and he cried but told me to forget it,” Halim said. “He said, ‘You are young — have more babies’.”

Meanwhile, attacks on female teachers and students are on the increase. Last November in Kandahar, eight schoolgirls were splashed with acid by men on a motorcycle. Little wonder that fewer girls are going to school.

To all intents and purposes the position of women is the same now as it was under the Taliban. In some respects it’s worse, with higher rates of suicide and abduction — and impunity for rapists.

Few rape victims have had the courage to raise their voices publicly because rape is regarded as a shame to the family. Even so, a 14-year-old girl named Bashira and her father decided to seek justice. Bashira had been gang-raped while going to pick up supplies from an aid distribution centre. It turned out that one of the accused was the son of an MP, who quickly intervened to ensure his son wasn’t arrested.

Bashira was so distraught after the rape that she tried to burn herself to death — I saw her scars. Her father said the rapists had tried to bribe him to drop the case; when he refused, they beat him so badly that he ended up in hospital.

Because I’ve been deprived of my parliamentary rights, I’m not in a position to do much for such people except to listen and then tell the world. Sadly, there are thousands of Bashiras in Afghanistan. I try to comfort the women and girls who come to me with their sorrows and I urge them not to choose suicide, but to choose to be part of the struggle to achieve justice for women.

For now, I continue my fight to return to parliament to denounce the tyrants. I still receive death threats and my supporters have uncovered — and thwarted — yet more assassination plots. But I don’t fear death; I fear the consequences of remaining silent in the face of appalling injustice.



© Malalai Joya 2009

Extracted from Raising My Voice by Malalai Joya, to be published by Random House on July 16 at £11.99. Copies can be ordered for £10.79, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article6634124.ece