Politicians militarize violence against Afghan women and girls to legitimize racism

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Politicians are arming violence against women and girls in Afghanistan to legitimize virulent racism and anti-immigrant sentiment, activists and politicians said.

There have been reports of Afghan women being forced to marry Taliban fighters – who have taken control of the South Asian nation in recent days – have quit their jobs and are staying at home, along with public flogging.

Some European politicians have responded to the crisis by focusing on anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.

Speaking in a televised speech after the Taliban took Kabul, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that France needed a solid plan to anticipate and protect itself from a wave of migrants from Afghanistan.

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said the country would consider returning failed Afghan asylum seekers to deportation centers in neighboring countries and Germany, warned Union candidate Armin Laschet. Christian Democrat in the Chancellery: 2015 should not be repeated.

It is a reference to the refugee crisis that began that year and saw German Chancellor Angela Merkel open the country’s borders to more than a million asylum-seeking migrants.

In Hungary, Levente Magyar, Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, warned: Hungary will not accept Afghan migrants without any restrictions.

Experts have warned that the responses of some politicians to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan are an attempt to appease the far right.

Joe Mulhall, head of research at Hope Not Hate, the UK’s leading anti-fascist campaign group, told The Independent: For some on the far right, the tragic events in Afghanistan are seen as an opportunity to push the anti-Muslim policy in the west.

While misogyny is fundamental to the far right’s worldview, there are now extremists who claim to care about women’s rights. Everyone must unreservedly condemn the Taliban and also ignore those on the far right who seek to exploit this terrible situation to push racist tropes in Europe.

While Kate Osamor, Labor MP for Jarrow, argued that it would be naive to say that the far right does not monopolize the mistreatment of women to promote their own ideologies.

Ms Osamor added: The far right uses it. I am extremely concerned for the women and children in Afghanistan. I am concerned that no real action will emerge from today’s debate in parliament. It is not a vote.

The government must take concrete and positive steps to support Afghans, especially women and children. We have to open our doors. I am worried about all Afghans.

As we speak, people are dying and fearful for their lives and we have a responsibility to help them.

Since US troops began to leave Afghanistan in May, the Taliban have continuously invaded the country. Afghan women journalists and health workers have been killed in a series of attacks since the start of peace talks between the Taliban and the US-backed Afghan government last year.

While the Taliban denies carrying out these attacks, government ministers hold them responsible.

Andrea Simon, director of End Violence Against Women Coalition, a leading UK organization, told The Independent that women’s liberation is of little concern to far-right groups.

They selectively condemn the treatment of women and instrumentalize calls to protect and defend the human rights of women to reinforce white supremacist racist rhetoric and spread hateful rhetoric, Ms. Simon added.

Violence against women is fueled by regressive right-wing politics and extremism around the world. We cannot allow the horrific events in Afghanistan to be turned into commodities and manipulated to serve the hate-fueled interests of the white supremacist far-right movement.

The activist warned that the humanitarian catastrophe currently ravaging Afghanistan is having a devastating impact on women.

And it is fair to expect that safe passage and asylum will be offered to all those who need to flee Afghanistan for safety reasons, Ms. Simon said. There is no room for the racist tropes of white saviorism, used to legitimize Islamophobia and erase the Muslim women’s agency, or diminish their role as key human rights activists and defenders whose voices must be heard. central to any response to the crisis.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban, pledged on Tuesday that the group would respect women’s rights, but within the standards of Islamic law.

But experts have expressed serious fears that the hard-won rights of Afghan women in the two decades since the Taliban’s defeat could be overturned.

Women were not allowed to work and girls were not allowed to go to school when the Taliban last ruled the country between the mid-1990s and 2001. While women had to be chaperoned by a male relative if they wanted to leave the house during this time.

Anti-racism and women’s rights activist Shaista Aziz told The Independent: The disastrous war on terror has claimed the lives of hundreds and thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and beyond.

It has also rolled back the rights of women and girls and fueled and mainstreamed Islamophobia, racism and hatred against refugees and migrants.

The crisis in Afghanistan will be used as a lightning rod by the Taliban to further dehumanize women and girls, but will also be used by extremists around the world to increase racism, division and hatred. It is essential that politicians, public figures and the media act in a responsible and measured manner.

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