Hazara Nation

By Tahir Qadiry
IPS

Violence against women perpetrated by a member of the woman’s family or someone known to her appears endemic in Afghanistan.

Few women are able to protect themselves against such violence, often by close relations, or speak out against their abusers.

The United Nations agency for women, UNIFEM, said a recent survey revealed that out of 1,327 incidents of violence against women in Afghanistan, 30.7 percent were related to physical violence; 30.1 percent to psychological violence; 25.2 percent to sexual violence; and 14 percent a combination of the three.

According to the survey, 82 percent of incidents reported were committed by family members, nine percent by those in the community and 1.7 by state authorities.

Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) registered 1,199 cases of sexual and gender-based violence in 2006.

Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sami, head of AIHRC in Afghanistan’s nine northern provinces said: "Very recently, we have had two cases of sexual abuse." The first case was in Sar-e Pol Province, where a grandfather sexually abused his grand daughter. Sami said the AIHRC assessed the case and informed the concerned officials who detained the man. But he was not punished to the extent he deserved to be, he added.

The second case involved a 21-year-old woman from Balkh’s Dehdadi district, 15-km from the capital city Mazar-e-Sharif, who has accused her father of rape. "He was detained and investigation is still under way. I should say that such cases are rare in northern Afghanistan," Sami said.

IPS met with Shogofa, who has dared to speak out against her father, a mullah (prayer leader). Under Islamic law (Sharia) those who sexually abuse a woman are to be harshly dealt with.

"My father is a mullah," she said. "Everyone told me that I was lying. They said how could a mullah do this?"

Shogofa, who has three sisters, said her father has always been violent. He would physically abuse their mother and the girls. When their mother failed to produce a male child, their father forced her to "propose" a second wife for him. "He would punish her (mother). She did not have any way. Eventually, she proposed a girl for my father and he got married for a second time," she said.

Two years after that marriage, he began making sexual demands of Shogofa. "My father used to kiss me and hug me, but I thought it was a father’s sympathy," she said.

It did not stop with Shogofa’s marriage or the birth of her daughter.

The young woman said that when she told her husband, Nehmat, that her father was demanding sex, he told her to carry a tape-recorder with her.

"My father asked me to come with him upstairs. I went there. He came very close to me and put two guns to my two sides and said that if I shouted, he would kill me," she recalled. "He raped me. Having done it, he went to the bazaar and asked me to get ready for another session that night".

But Shogofa had recorded his voice and had something to prove to her husband and other relatives.

Her husband waited with the family for her father to come home, to hand him over to the police.

"When Shogofa’s father came home and saw everyone was upset, he knew what had happened. He tried to escape, but we managed to catch him, have him arrested," said Nehmat.

Shogofa’s 14-year-old sister, who did not want to be named, also said that their father had attempted to rape her many times, but did not manage. "My father used to ask me to watch pornographic films. He sometimes hugged me very tightly, I was afraid," she said.

According to Shogofa, her father has changed since he bought a digital dish antenna that gives him access to hundreds of TV channels. "He was watching pornographic films from evening to mid-night. It changed his behaviour," she said.

In a letter to women’s organisations and authorities in Balkh province, Shogofa said she would commit suicide if her father is not hanged or imprisoned for life. "I do not want to see him anymore. I kindly ask the prosecution department to punish my father. If I see him, I will recall what he did to me," she told IPS.

Malalai Usmani, head of the Balkh women’s department, said her officials were working round the clock to ensure justice would be done.

"He should be stoned to death," said Qari Azizollah, an intellectual and prayer leader. Calling the incident "shameful and cowardly" he told IPS: "I have heard of a girl being raped. But a father raping his daughter!"