Women were the first to suffer the restrictions imposed by the new government.
Recording themselves while singing, showing only a small part of their faces to the camera: dozens of Afghan women are participating in an online protest movement against a new law that forbids women’s voices from being heard in public spaces.
The Taliban government announced last week that a law promoting “virtue and preventing vice,” based on Sharia law, had come into effect at the end of July. Among its 35 articles, it outlines obligations and prohibitions, mainly related to dress codes, which heavily target women. Among other things, women are not allowed to sing or recite poetry in public.
In response, many Afghan women, both inside and outside the country, have posted videos on social media where they sing, accompanied by captions like “My voice is not forbidden” and “No to the Taliban.”
In one of these videos, filmed in Afghanistan, a woman dressed in black from head to toe, with a long veil covering her face, sings. “You have silenced me for the coming years. You have imprisoned me in my home for the crime of being a woman,” she says.
Zala Zazai, a former police officer now living in Poland, shared a video in which she sings a song by Ariana Sayeed, a well-known Afghan artist, about the resistance of women in her country. The bans imposed on women are “unacceptable,” she told Agence France-Presse. “Afghan women have finally realized that misogynists can no longer deny our human rights in the name of religion and culture. And our voices demanding our rights will never be silenced,” she added.
Activists have posted other videos in which they raise their fists or tear up photos of the Taliban’s supreme leader, Emir Hibatullah Akhundzada, who rules by decree from his stronghold in Kandahar.
“The voice of a woman is the voice of justice,” chants a group of women in another video.
On the X platform, Taiba Sulaimani sings while adjusting her veil in front of a mirror: “A woman’s voice is her identity, not something that should be hidden.”
The new law also stipulates that a woman’s voice should not be heard outside the walls of her home. “When an adult woman needs to leave her house, she is required to cover her face, body, and voice,” the text reads, using the term “awrah” from Sharia, which refers to parts of the human body that must be covered.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed that those criticizing the law are displaying “arrogance” and ignorance of Sharia.
On Tuesday, the United Nations called for the law to be withdrawn, describing it as “absolutely unacceptable.” Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the law “reinforces a policy that completely erases women’s presence from public space, silences their voices, and strips them of their autonomy, attempting to turn them into faceless, voiceless shadows.”
Human rights organisations have expressed their concerns about this law, some provisions of which had already been informally applied since the Taliban took power in August 2021. The Taliban assured on Monday that the law would be enforced “with moderation.”
Women were the first to suffer the restrictions imposed by the new government, as their access to education, public spaces, and certain professions was severely limited. The UN has labeled this situation as “gender apartheid.”
Afghans are not allowed to look at the faces of individuals of the opposite sex unless they are close relatives. Taxi drivers are prohibited from transporting women traveling without a “mahram,” a male guardian who is a close relative.
