It seems especially narcissistic and vicious that UNNAMED DAD murdered these girls on the very day that their mother was to return from her tour in Afghanistan.
http://kdhnews.com/news/sisters-killed-last-week-are-laid-to-rest/article_a24dd9b2-87a3-11e3-8ab7-001a4bcf6878.html
Sisters killed last week are laid to rest
Posted: Tuesday, January 28, 2014 4:30 am
Posted on Jan 28, 2014
by Rose L Thayer
Leila and Zeinab Ezzeddine were beautiful, cheerful and girly, said their uncle, Jose Santisteban.
“These angels came to this world to put a smile on my sister, to put a smile on me,” he said.
Santisteban and hundreds of other family members and friends filled the Crawford-Bowers Funeral Home Chapel in Killeen on Monday to remember Leila, 9, and Zeinab, 4, whose lives were cut short Jan. 21 in an apparent murder-suicide, according to Army investigators.
Pink flowers covered a single casket surrounded by pink, purple and teal balloons. A series of photos played on TV screens, showing two happy children swimming and playing with horses, always smiling.
Many attendees wore Army uniforms. The girls’ mother, Pfc. Carla Santisteban, is a soldier with 15th Brigade Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.
On Jan. 21, Carla Santisteban arrived at Fort Hood from a six-month deployment to Afghanistan to learn her daughters appeared to have died at the hands of their father earlier that morning. All three were Army dependents.
“We have problems, frustrations, things so heavy for us, but when I was with my nieces, everything in the world was gone,” their uncle said in his eulogy. “Just them and me and my family and my sister and all the problems in the world were gone.”
Jose Santisteban remembered Leila as wise for her age, and Zeinab as funny.
He recalled a day the family wanted to go play at the track. All of them waited for “ZZ” to get ready.
“She came out wearing a purse, makeup, high heels and long nails,” he said with a hint of laughter in his voice. When questioned about her accessories, ZZ told her family she “needed that.”
Many friends from Leila’s elementary school also attended the funeral service. Some carried stuffed animals or colorful flower arrangements.
Ten-year-old Leila San Salvador made friends with the eldest daughter, because the two share the same first name. The two would walk home from school together, something Leila San Salvador said she will always remember.
“(I miss) her,” she said.
Steve Pena, Carla Santisteban’s brother-in-law, took time during the service to thank the Army and her unit for the support they have shown — not just soldier to soldier, but as her friend.
The family has been overwhelmed by the devotion and dedication shown amid this tragedy, he said.
“They’re not just good fighting men and women, they are good human beings,” he said. “When it’s time to fight ... they fight. When it’s time to hug ... they do that as well.”
Maj. Paul Weberg, a Catholic chaplain from the 89th Military Police Brigade, presided over the service.
He compared Carla Santisteban’s pain to that of Mary’s after Jesus died. But he reminded mourners that after Good Friday, came Easter Sunday.
“God gives the gift of life, he never takes the gift back. Life is ours for all of eternity. In death, life is only changed,” he said. “May their souls ... rest in peace. Amen.”
Showing posts with label Afganistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afganistan. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Monday, November 28, 2011
Authorities ignored signs that now murdered girls were abused by father (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
There was no intervention with dad MOHAMMAD SHAFIA. The child welfare authorities could have investigated and removed these girls from his home--but they declined to do so. This despite ample evidence that the girls were being abused physically and emotionally. And they have the nerve to blame the girls for not "confronting" this man, the one who stands charged in the slaying of four in a so-called "honor killing"? How about the gutless wonders who even as adults, not living under Daddy's regime, declined to get involved? Even as a social worker has testified that at least one of the daughters had asked for help?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/teens-terrified-of-father-showed-up-at-school-with-bruises-honour-killings-trial-hears/article2247802/
Teens terrified of father, showed up at school with bruises, ‘honour killings’ trial hears
timothy appleby
KINGSTON— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011 2:27PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011 10:26PM EST
In hindsight, all the warning signs were there.
One of the teenagers came to school with bruises, but wouldn’t say how they occurred. Her angry younger sister was skipping classes, her grades plummeting. Both were desperate to leave home. And hovering over everything was the spectre of a controlling, often violent father, of whom they were clearly terrified.
In short, what appears to have transpired was a profound and – it’s alleged– ultimately murderous clash of cultures.
Listening to teachers and social workers on Thursday, the jury weighing the fate of three Afghan-Canadians accused of committing multiple so-called honour killings heard a wealth of testimony pointing to a deeply dysfunctional, male-dominated Montreal household.
On trial are Kabul-born businessman Mohammad Shafia, 58; his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41; and their eldest son, Hamed, 20. They stand jointly accused of murdering three of Mr. Shafia’s and Ms. Yahya’s teenaged daughters, Zainab, Sahar and Geeti, aged 19, 17 and 13 respectively, along with Mr. Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 53.
The four bodies were discovered in a car at the bottom of a lock on the Rideau Canal just east of Kingston in June, 2009.
The jury has already heard that Sahar attempted suicide, and fresh testimony Thursday underscored the depths of her misery and fear, and the similar plight of her younger sister Geeti. Both attended Antoine de Saint-Exupery high school in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard.
Teacher Claudia Deslauriers told the jury of seeing bruises, scratches and scars on Sahar’s forearms. When she asked the teen what had happened, “she didn’t say anything,” Ms. Deslauriers testified.
Ms. Deslauriers also recounted meeting the children’s “really angry” mother, Ms. Yahya, who demanded to know if Sahar had a boyfriend, and if Ms. Deslauriers had seen her kissing him. The teacher said no, she had not, which was false, because, “I didn’t want her to have any problems at the house.” Ms. Yahya told the teacher she could not tolerate her daughter kissing a boy “because it did not fall within her values,” Ms. Deslauriers testified.
Also testifying Thursday was social worker Stephanie Benjamin, summoned by the school psychologist just weeks before Sahar and the others died.
“She feared being beaten by her father, who had just come back to Canada [from a business trip],” Ms. Benjamin said of Sahar, who was anxious to leave home and get a job. Her long-term hope was to become a gynecologist and work in Afghanistan, but her immediate need was to get away from her father and older brother, Hamed, who more than once had physically abused her – on one occasion by flinging scissors at her from across the table. “She was asking me to help,” Ms. Benjamin testified.
It was not only her parents and older brother whom Sahar feared, the trial heard. She worried about one of her other male relatives telling the adults that she was associating with boys at school. “She was afraid [the relative] would tell her father she was a whore,” former teacher Antonella Enea told the jury.
“She said she couldn't live a normal life – to see her friends, things of that nature,” Ms. Enea said of Sahar, who attended classes for new immigrants at the school. Geeti, too, showed signs of being profoundly unhappy at home and afraid of her father, manifested in poor attendance and mood swings, the jury heard.
On two separate occasions – in 2008 and then in 2009, just weeks before the teens died – child-welfare authorities in Montreal were contacted. Both times there was no intervention. Part of the difficulty, the trial has been told, was that Sahar and Geeti were reluctant to confront their domineering father.
The trial is in its sixth week, and the prosecution is expected to wrap up its case on Dec. 5.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/teens-terrified-of-father-showed-up-at-school-with-bruises-honour-killings-trial-hears/article2247802/
Teens terrified of father, showed up at school with bruises, ‘honour killings’ trial hears
timothy appleby
KINGSTON— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011 2:27PM EST
Last updated Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011 10:26PM EST
In hindsight, all the warning signs were there.
One of the teenagers came to school with bruises, but wouldn’t say how they occurred. Her angry younger sister was skipping classes, her grades plummeting. Both were desperate to leave home. And hovering over everything was the spectre of a controlling, often violent father, of whom they were clearly terrified.
In short, what appears to have transpired was a profound and – it’s alleged– ultimately murderous clash of cultures.
Listening to teachers and social workers on Thursday, the jury weighing the fate of three Afghan-Canadians accused of committing multiple so-called honour killings heard a wealth of testimony pointing to a deeply dysfunctional, male-dominated Montreal household.
On trial are Kabul-born businessman Mohammad Shafia, 58; his second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41; and their eldest son, Hamed, 20. They stand jointly accused of murdering three of Mr. Shafia’s and Ms. Yahya’s teenaged daughters, Zainab, Sahar and Geeti, aged 19, 17 and 13 respectively, along with Mr. Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, 53.
The four bodies were discovered in a car at the bottom of a lock on the Rideau Canal just east of Kingston in June, 2009.
The jury has already heard that Sahar attempted suicide, and fresh testimony Thursday underscored the depths of her misery and fear, and the similar plight of her younger sister Geeti. Both attended Antoine de Saint-Exupery high school in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard.
Teacher Claudia Deslauriers told the jury of seeing bruises, scratches and scars on Sahar’s forearms. When she asked the teen what had happened, “she didn’t say anything,” Ms. Deslauriers testified.
Ms. Deslauriers also recounted meeting the children’s “really angry” mother, Ms. Yahya, who demanded to know if Sahar had a boyfriend, and if Ms. Deslauriers had seen her kissing him. The teacher said no, she had not, which was false, because, “I didn’t want her to have any problems at the house.” Ms. Yahya told the teacher she could not tolerate her daughter kissing a boy “because it did not fall within her values,” Ms. Deslauriers testified.
Also testifying Thursday was social worker Stephanie Benjamin, summoned by the school psychologist just weeks before Sahar and the others died.
“She feared being beaten by her father, who had just come back to Canada [from a business trip],” Ms. Benjamin said of Sahar, who was anxious to leave home and get a job. Her long-term hope was to become a gynecologist and work in Afghanistan, but her immediate need was to get away from her father and older brother, Hamed, who more than once had physically abused her – on one occasion by flinging scissors at her from across the table. “She was asking me to help,” Ms. Benjamin testified.
It was not only her parents and older brother whom Sahar feared, the trial heard. She worried about one of her other male relatives telling the adults that she was associating with boys at school. “She was afraid [the relative] would tell her father she was a whore,” former teacher Antonella Enea told the jury.
“She said she couldn't live a normal life – to see her friends, things of that nature,” Ms. Enea said of Sahar, who attended classes for new immigrants at the school. Geeti, too, showed signs of being profoundly unhappy at home and afraid of her father, manifested in poor attendance and mood swings, the jury heard.
On two separate occasions – in 2008 and then in 2009, just weeks before the teens died – child-welfare authorities in Montreal were contacted. Both times there was no intervention. Part of the difficulty, the trial has been told, was that Sahar and Geeti were reluctant to confront their domineering father.
The trial is in its sixth week, and the prosecution is expected to wrap up its case on Dec. 5.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Dad goes to trial for murder of three daughters, their mother in "honor killing" (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
Dad MOHAMMAD SHAFIA was miffed because his teen daughters....had boyfriends! And they didn't want to wear head scarves! Oh, the horror! So this scumbag "allegedly" killed them and their mother, his first wife.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/brutal-honor-killing-described-in-canadian-trial-for-muslim-father-accused-of-murdering-three-daughters-wife/
BRUTAL ‘HONOR KILLING’ DESCRIBED IN CANADIAN TRIAL FOR MUSLIM FATHER ACCUSED OF MURDERING THREE DAUGHTERS & WIFE
Posted on October 23, 2011 at 11:39am
by Sharona Schwartz
A Canadian jury heard chilling details from prosecutors who accuse Afghan immigrant Mohammad Shafia of killing his three daughters and his first wife, whom he considered to be dishonoring the family. Prosecutors say his son and his second wife helped him commit and then cover up the crime.
On June 30, 2009, the bodies of 19-year-old Zainab Shafia, 17-year-old Sahar Shafia, 13-year-old Geeti Shafia and 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad were found inside a Nissan submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario. They were on their way home from a family trip to Niagara Falls.
CTV reports on the opening day of the trial:
Crown prosecutors began framing the deaths of three teenage girls and their father’s first wife as an “honour killing” in an Ontario courtroom on Thursday, more than two years after the victims were found submerged in the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ont.
It‘s expected that the honour killing narrative will be key to the prosecution’s case against the accused family members: Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia.
All three face four counts each of first-degree murder, and all three have pleaded not guilty to those charges
Evidence included a Google search from the wealthy businessman’s home computer about “where to commit a murder” and if a prisoner can continue to control his real estate properties.
Prosecutors quoted incriminating taped conversations between the husband and wife. From CTV:
Other conversations, secretly recorded by police, reveal that the girls’ father felt betrayed because his daughters had boyfriends, Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle said.
“Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour,” Shafia said, according to Lacelle…
Lacelle continued to quote Shafia: “There can be no treachery, no violation more than this … They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam…They betrayed everything.”
Shafia also told his wife: “God’s curse on them for generations. May the devil s— on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?”
The family purchased the Nissan for $5,000 just days before the killing, another piece of evidence prosecutors are using to demonstrate premeditation.
What evoked their father’s wrath was the daughters’ “Western lifestyle,” including an interest in dating boys and a lack of interest in wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf, the hijab.
According to the Toronto Sun, at one point, daughter Zainab was kept home from school for a year after a boy visited her at home when her father was out.
In 2008, child and youth protective services investigated after a call by school officials but closed the case. On a separate occasion, the children contacted police to report physical abuse at home.
At the canal crime scene, police found plastic shards from a smashed headlight which matched another family car, a Lexus, suggesting the Nissan was nudged into the canal by the Lexus. Prosecutors indicate Shafia tried to stage a fake accident to dispose of the bodies of his daughters and first wife.
After realizing his first wife Rona couldn’t bear children, Shafia married a second wife Tooba (now on trial with him) as is common in the Muslim world. The Globe and Mail reports:
The Shafia family lived in a polygamous arrangement and moved to Canada in 2007, settling in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard after living in Australia, Pakistan and then in Dubai for 15 years.
The Shafias had seven children, three of whom were placed in care by Quebec authorities after their parents’ arrest. All seven are the offspring of Mr. Shafia and Ms. Yahya, whom he married in Afghanistan in 1988.
This is not the first time this Muslim tradition has been imported to North America. Recent “honor killing” cases include:
In October 2009, Iraqi immigrant Faleh Al-Maleki used his car to run over and kill his 20-year-old daughter Noor in Peoria, Ariz. Prosecutors said it was an honor killing because her father felt she shamed the family by becoming “too Westernized” and rejecting an arranged marriage.
Also that year, Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan — the founder of a Muslim television station in Buffalo, NY — was convicted of stabbing his wife Aasiya 40 times, then beheading her while their children were waiting in a parked car outside. He had founded the TV station to counter negative stereotypes about Islam after 9/11.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/brutal-honor-killing-described-in-canadian-trial-for-muslim-father-accused-of-murdering-three-daughters-wife/
BRUTAL ‘HONOR KILLING’ DESCRIBED IN CANADIAN TRIAL FOR MUSLIM FATHER ACCUSED OF MURDERING THREE DAUGHTERS & WIFE
Posted on October 23, 2011 at 11:39am
by Sharona Schwartz
A Canadian jury heard chilling details from prosecutors who accuse Afghan immigrant Mohammad Shafia of killing his three daughters and his first wife, whom he considered to be dishonoring the family. Prosecutors say his son and his second wife helped him commit and then cover up the crime.
On June 30, 2009, the bodies of 19-year-old Zainab Shafia, 17-year-old Sahar Shafia, 13-year-old Geeti Shafia and 50-year-old Rona Amir Mohammad were found inside a Nissan submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario. They were on their way home from a family trip to Niagara Falls.
CTV reports on the opening day of the trial:
Crown prosecutors began framing the deaths of three teenage girls and their father’s first wife as an “honour killing” in an Ontario courtroom on Thursday, more than two years after the victims were found submerged in the Rideau Canal near Kingston, Ont.
It‘s expected that the honour killing narrative will be key to the prosecution’s case against the accused family members: Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 41, husband Mohammad Shafia, 58, and son, Hamed Mohammad Shafia.
All three face four counts each of first-degree murder, and all three have pleaded not guilty to those charges
Evidence included a Google search from the wealthy businessman’s home computer about “where to commit a murder” and if a prisoner can continue to control his real estate properties.
Prosecutors quoted incriminating taped conversations between the husband and wife. From CTV:
Other conversations, secretly recorded by police, reveal that the girls’ father felt betrayed because his daughters had boyfriends, Crown attorney Laurie Lacelle said.
“Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows, nothing is more dear to me than my honour,” Shafia said, according to Lacelle…
Lacelle continued to quote Shafia: “There can be no treachery, no violation more than this … They committed treason from beginning to end. They betrayed humankind. They betrayed Islam…They betrayed everything.”
Shafia also told his wife: “God’s curse on them for generations. May the devil s— on their graves. Is that what a daughter should be? Would a daughter be such a whore?”
The family purchased the Nissan for $5,000 just days before the killing, another piece of evidence prosecutors are using to demonstrate premeditation.
What evoked their father’s wrath was the daughters’ “Western lifestyle,” including an interest in dating boys and a lack of interest in wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf, the hijab.
According to the Toronto Sun, at one point, daughter Zainab was kept home from school for a year after a boy visited her at home when her father was out.
In 2008, child and youth protective services investigated after a call by school officials but closed the case. On a separate occasion, the children contacted police to report physical abuse at home.
At the canal crime scene, police found plastic shards from a smashed headlight which matched another family car, a Lexus, suggesting the Nissan was nudged into the canal by the Lexus. Prosecutors indicate Shafia tried to stage a fake accident to dispose of the bodies of his daughters and first wife.
After realizing his first wife Rona couldn’t bear children, Shafia married a second wife Tooba (now on trial with him) as is common in the Muslim world. The Globe and Mail reports:
The Shafia family lived in a polygamous arrangement and moved to Canada in 2007, settling in the Montreal borough of St. Leonard after living in Australia, Pakistan and then in Dubai for 15 years.
The Shafias had seven children, three of whom were placed in care by Quebec authorities after their parents’ arrest. All seven are the offspring of Mr. Shafia and Ms. Yahya, whom he married in Afghanistan in 1988.
This is not the first time this Muslim tradition has been imported to North America. Recent “honor killing” cases include:
In October 2009, Iraqi immigrant Faleh Al-Maleki used his car to run over and kill his 20-year-old daughter Noor in Peoria, Ariz. Prosecutors said it was an honor killing because her father felt she shamed the family by becoming “too Westernized” and rejecting an arranged marriage.
Also that year, Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan — the founder of a Muslim television station in Buffalo, NY — was convicted of stabbing his wife Aasiya 40 times, then beheading her while their children were waiting in a parked car outside. He had founded the TV station to counter negative stereotypes about Islam after 9/11.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
My fight to protect the women in my country (Afganistan)
Inspiring story of Wazhma Frogh, who won the 2009 U.S. State Department's International Women of Courage Award. Note, however, that you have to go to the U.K. media to hear her speak. Why does the U.S. media black out coverage of these things?
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle-news/your-life/2010/03/10/my-fight-to-protect-the-women-in-my-country-92746-26001812/
My fight to protect the women in my country
Mar 10 2010
By Catherine Vonledebur
AFGHAN women’s rights defender Wazhma Frogh rubbed shoulders with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama when she won the 2009 US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award.
She has faced prejudice, intimidation and death threats to speak out against domestic violence, marital rape and child abuse in Afghanistan.
Yet the 30-year-old post graduate student at Warwick University says: ” If I am able to open doors for 10 other women in my country, then it is worth it.”
ANYONE who has read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini will know women in Afghanistan have been deprived the most basic human rights.
This story of two women, by the author of The Kite Runner, is set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s past 30 years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to the post-Taliban rebuilding.
In his story, Mariam, aged 15, is married off to Rasheed, a shoemaker 30 years her senior by her estranged father, following her mother’s suicide. After seven miscarriages Rasheed takes a second younger wife Laila, who is educated, ambitious and secretly pregnant with another man’s child...
And that is just fiction.
Wazhma Frogh has witnessed the harsh reality.
The 30-year-old human rights lawyer from Kabul said: “I’d say Khaled Hosseini’s story is not wholly representative of Afghan life, but the very brutal reality of child abuse is true.
“In The Kite Runner the tradition of making boys dance and using them as sex slaves is quite common, and like the characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns young girls are married off to old men.
“I have been to a wedding where a three-year-old girl was married. Her father gave her to an old man. They took her to her husband’s house and she was just playing, she didn’t understand.
“When I started work on child sexual abuse I had the problem that people would not even listen. They’d say: “You need to stop talking about these issues. We are a Muslim country”.
“Human rights activists set up a woman’s shelter and we used domestic abuse cases of these women to advocate and lobby for women and children’s rights.”
Cases include a woman whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband because she simply walked out of her home without him, and a woman murdered by her husband in front of the whole community because she left him, tired of the domestic abuse she had suffered.
The gender and development specialist continued: “One mother at the shelter brought her 12-year-old daughter who was raped by her uncle. Her husband had said to her ‘If you raise your voice about this I will kill you’, but the mother ignored him and took her daughter away.
“It’s amazing when you see a mother challenging her husband and pressing charges against the uncle. You just want to salute her.”
“It’s amazing when you see a mother challenging her husband and pressing charges against the uncle. You just want to salute her.”
Wazhma’s bold outspokenness for women, children and social justice has won international recognition and also seen the passing of Afghanistan’s new Elimination of Violence Against Women law.
In 2009 Wazhma was one of eight women chosen for the US State’s International Woman of Courage award, presented by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.
She said: ”This award recognises the women of Afghanistan are not all passive or victims, but women who are making a difference.
“Both of them are very nice. Michelle Obama is an ordinary woman with alot of passion and commitment for women worldwide. I met her again at the London Conference in January and she emphasised her continued support for the women of Afghanistan.”
Wazhma is studying for a masters in international development law and human rights at Warwick University, but she also writes a blog – wazhmafrogh.blogspot.com – and has written for newspapers, including the Washington Post and The Guardian.
“Warwick University has a good image worldwide. I wanted to study this course because one day I would like to become a judge in Afghanistan’s Supreme court,” she said.
Growing up in Kabul, Wazhma was the oldest of five children, four girls and one boy.
She has vivid memories of the Soviet occupation, the bombing and the reign of the Taliban.
Under the 1996-2001 Taliban rule Afghan women were routinely beaten in public and even stoned to death for perceived breaches of Islamic law.
Wazhma and her sisters, like all other women, could not leave the house without a male relative or wearing a burka.
She said: “One of the scariest moments for me was going to the market with my dad. I was wearing a burka and could hardly see where I was going. I held on to what I thought was his coat but it turned out to be a Taliban leader.
“He turned and shouted at me asking what I was doing there alone. Terrified, I said I’d lost my dad: ‘Go and find your father!’ he shouted.”
When she was 10 Wazhma’s family fled. They ended up as refugees in Pakistan.
At the age of 12 Wazhma offered to tutor her landlady’s children in exchange for reduced rent, so she and her sisters would be able to continue school.
She said: “I started challenging values and because I was able to earn money that gave me status and they started listening to me. It was not easy at that time. But education is an empowering tool.”
Wazhma first became involved in human rights when she was 17. She used her internship at a leading Pakistani newspaper to expose poor living conditions and abuses of women’s rights in the Afghan refugee camps.
Wazhma has since organised public debates on domestic violence and marital rape in Afghanistan, both previously unmentionable topics in her country.
She persuaded mullahs to join her in a month-long campaign of speaking out against domestic violence, and, by mobilising a group of over 35 civil society organizations, convinced the government of Afghanistan to take action against child rape.
Even in her own family Wazhma has seen attitudes change towards women. Her father is now very supportive of her sister’s education. One sister is married and studying law, another is training to be a teacher while her 15-year-old brother and 10-year-old sister, are still in school.
Her parents are “happy and proud” of their daughter’s work, but understandably worried for her safety.
Last April an outspoken female Afghan human rights activist Sitara Achakzai was gunned down at point blank range by the Taliban.
Although she lives hundreds of miles away from Kabul in Coventry, Wazhma has received death threats.
She said: “Three months ago someone phoned my Dad in Kabul and said: ‘Your daughter thinks she’s safe in the UK, but this is not true’.
“It is hard. I see that they are trying to create fear in me so that I will stop – but I will not stop! If I am able to open doors for 10 other women in my country, then it is worth it.”
Wazhma believes International Women’s Day should be remembered as a struggle for justice across the world.
“In Afghanistan, International Women’s Day is known as Women’s Solidarity Day.
“We have a lot to celebrate. We have achieved a lot in the last nine years,” she said. “But education, health and jobs in the rural economy are still important issues – out of six million children only 40 per cent of girls are going to school.
“We recognise in different parts of in the world there are common situations. In the UK there is the pay difference between men and women, the glass ceiling.”
Cycle of abuse
WOMEN human rights defenders in Afghanistan have told Amnesty International they face intimidation and attacks as they attempt to tackle violence and discrimination in the country.
Women and girls in Afghanistan face widespread human rights abuses including abduction, rape and trafficking.
More than 87 per cent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the UN, and between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages are forced.
This is despite a pledge from the Afghan government to protect women’s rights and promote gender equality in Afghanistan.
AFGHAN wives are choose to burn themselves to death to escape a life of domestic torture and abuse.
Domestic violence and forced marriage are forcing women to commit self-immolation and suicide.
“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws,” Zarmina, 28, told a IRIN Afghanistan TV.
She along with a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, were treated in Herat’s burns hospital.
More than 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died.
IN January 17-year-old Afghan girl Amina of the Chakhansoor District of Nimroz Province set herself on fire and died because of a forced engagement to a 55-year-old man.
Dur Mohammad, her father, had engaged his daughter to Faiz Mohammad and in exchange had engaged his 22-year old daughter to himself.
Dur Mohammad has a wife and five children and Faiz Mohammad has a wife and four children.
Amina had many suitors and some young men were even ready to pay as much as 750,000 Afghanis but Amina’s father wouldn’t agree.
Amina Hakimi, head of the Women’s Administration of Nimroz, condemned Amina’s engagement and said families shouldn’t force their daughters into engagement or marriage.
Ghulam Farooq Sherzad, an appeal court chief said that if it was proven that Amina committed suicide because of the forced engagement her father would be arrested and could be jailed for ten years.
OVER the past two years more than 1,900 cases of violence against women in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were recorded in a database run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UN Fund for Women.
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/lifestyle-news/your-life/2010/03/10/my-fight-to-protect-the-women-in-my-country-92746-26001812/
My fight to protect the women in my country
Mar 10 2010
By Catherine Vonledebur
AFGHAN women’s rights defender Wazhma Frogh rubbed shoulders with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama when she won the 2009 US State Department’s International Women of Courage Award.
She has faced prejudice, intimidation and death threats to speak out against domestic violence, marital rape and child abuse in Afghanistan.
Yet the 30-year-old post graduate student at Warwick University says: ” If I am able to open doors for 10 other women in my country, then it is worth it.”
ANYONE who has read A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini will know women in Afghanistan have been deprived the most basic human rights.
This story of two women, by the author of The Kite Runner, is set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s past 30 years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to the post-Taliban rebuilding.
In his story, Mariam, aged 15, is married off to Rasheed, a shoemaker 30 years her senior by her estranged father, following her mother’s suicide. After seven miscarriages Rasheed takes a second younger wife Laila, who is educated, ambitious and secretly pregnant with another man’s child...
And that is just fiction.
Wazhma Frogh has witnessed the harsh reality.
The 30-year-old human rights lawyer from Kabul said: “I’d say Khaled Hosseini’s story is not wholly representative of Afghan life, but the very brutal reality of child abuse is true.
“In The Kite Runner the tradition of making boys dance and using them as sex slaves is quite common, and like the characters in A Thousand Splendid Suns young girls are married off to old men.
“I have been to a wedding where a three-year-old girl was married. Her father gave her to an old man. They took her to her husband’s house and she was just playing, she didn’t understand.
“When I started work on child sexual abuse I had the problem that people would not even listen. They’d say: “You need to stop talking about these issues. We are a Muslim country”.
“Human rights activists set up a woman’s shelter and we used domestic abuse cases of these women to advocate and lobby for women and children’s rights.”
Cases include a woman whose nose and ears were cut off by her husband because she simply walked out of her home without him, and a woman murdered by her husband in front of the whole community because she left him, tired of the domestic abuse she had suffered.
The gender and development specialist continued: “One mother at the shelter brought her 12-year-old daughter who was raped by her uncle. Her husband had said to her ‘If you raise your voice about this I will kill you’, but the mother ignored him and took her daughter away.
“It’s amazing when you see a mother challenging her husband and pressing charges against the uncle. You just want to salute her.”
“It’s amazing when you see a mother challenging her husband and pressing charges against the uncle. You just want to salute her.”
Wazhma’s bold outspokenness for women, children and social justice has won international recognition and also seen the passing of Afghanistan’s new Elimination of Violence Against Women law.
In 2009 Wazhma was one of eight women chosen for the US State’s International Woman of Courage award, presented by Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.
She said: ”This award recognises the women of Afghanistan are not all passive or victims, but women who are making a difference.
“Both of them are very nice. Michelle Obama is an ordinary woman with alot of passion and commitment for women worldwide. I met her again at the London Conference in January and she emphasised her continued support for the women of Afghanistan.”
Wazhma is studying for a masters in international development law and human rights at Warwick University, but she also writes a blog – wazhmafrogh.blogspot.com – and has written for newspapers, including the Washington Post and The Guardian.
“Warwick University has a good image worldwide. I wanted to study this course because one day I would like to become a judge in Afghanistan’s Supreme court,” she said.
Growing up in Kabul, Wazhma was the oldest of five children, four girls and one boy.
She has vivid memories of the Soviet occupation, the bombing and the reign of the Taliban.
Under the 1996-2001 Taliban rule Afghan women were routinely beaten in public and even stoned to death for perceived breaches of Islamic law.
Wazhma and her sisters, like all other women, could not leave the house without a male relative or wearing a burka.
She said: “One of the scariest moments for me was going to the market with my dad. I was wearing a burka and could hardly see where I was going. I held on to what I thought was his coat but it turned out to be a Taliban leader.
“He turned and shouted at me asking what I was doing there alone. Terrified, I said I’d lost my dad: ‘Go and find your father!’ he shouted.”
When she was 10 Wazhma’s family fled. They ended up as refugees in Pakistan.
At the age of 12 Wazhma offered to tutor her landlady’s children in exchange for reduced rent, so she and her sisters would be able to continue school.
She said: “I started challenging values and because I was able to earn money that gave me status and they started listening to me. It was not easy at that time. But education is an empowering tool.”
Wazhma first became involved in human rights when she was 17. She used her internship at a leading Pakistani newspaper to expose poor living conditions and abuses of women’s rights in the Afghan refugee camps.
Wazhma has since organised public debates on domestic violence and marital rape in Afghanistan, both previously unmentionable topics in her country.
She persuaded mullahs to join her in a month-long campaign of speaking out against domestic violence, and, by mobilising a group of over 35 civil society organizations, convinced the government of Afghanistan to take action against child rape.
Even in her own family Wazhma has seen attitudes change towards women. Her father is now very supportive of her sister’s education. One sister is married and studying law, another is training to be a teacher while her 15-year-old brother and 10-year-old sister, are still in school.
Her parents are “happy and proud” of their daughter’s work, but understandably worried for her safety.
Last April an outspoken female Afghan human rights activist Sitara Achakzai was gunned down at point blank range by the Taliban.
Although she lives hundreds of miles away from Kabul in Coventry, Wazhma has received death threats.
She said: “Three months ago someone phoned my Dad in Kabul and said: ‘Your daughter thinks she’s safe in the UK, but this is not true’.
“It is hard. I see that they are trying to create fear in me so that I will stop – but I will not stop! If I am able to open doors for 10 other women in my country, then it is worth it.”
Wazhma believes International Women’s Day should be remembered as a struggle for justice across the world.
“In Afghanistan, International Women’s Day is known as Women’s Solidarity Day.
“We have a lot to celebrate. We have achieved a lot in the last nine years,” she said. “But education, health and jobs in the rural economy are still important issues – out of six million children only 40 per cent of girls are going to school.
“We recognise in different parts of in the world there are common situations. In the UK there is the pay difference between men and women, the glass ceiling.”
Cycle of abuse
WOMEN human rights defenders in Afghanistan have told Amnesty International they face intimidation and attacks as they attempt to tackle violence and discrimination in the country.
Women and girls in Afghanistan face widespread human rights abuses including abduction, rape and trafficking.
More than 87 per cent of Afghan women suffer from domestic abuse, according to the UN, and between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages are forced.
This is despite a pledge from the Afghan government to protect women’s rights and promote gender equality in Afghanistan.
AFGHAN wives are choose to burn themselves to death to escape a life of domestic torture and abuse.
Domestic violence and forced marriage are forcing women to commit self-immolation and suicide.
“I poured fuel over my body and set myself ablaze because I was regularly beaten up and insulted by my husband and in-laws,” Zarmina, 28, told a IRIN Afghanistan TV.
She along with a dozen other women with self-inflicted burns, were treated in Herat’s burns hospital.
More than 90 self-immolation cases have been registered at the hospital in the past 11 months; 55 women had died.
IN January 17-year-old Afghan girl Amina of the Chakhansoor District of Nimroz Province set herself on fire and died because of a forced engagement to a 55-year-old man.
Dur Mohammad, her father, had engaged his daughter to Faiz Mohammad and in exchange had engaged his 22-year old daughter to himself.
Dur Mohammad has a wife and five children and Faiz Mohammad has a wife and four children.
Amina had many suitors and some young men were even ready to pay as much as 750,000 Afghanis but Amina’s father wouldn’t agree.
Amina Hakimi, head of the Women’s Administration of Nimroz, condemned Amina’s engagement and said families shouldn’t force their daughters into engagement or marriage.
Ghulam Farooq Sherzad, an appeal court chief said that if it was proven that Amina committed suicide because of the forced engagement her father would be arrested and could be jailed for ten years.
OVER the past two years more than 1,900 cases of violence against women in 26 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were recorded in a database run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and UN Fund for Women.
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