Afghanistan's Virtue and Vices Administration

"Even when an adult female prays and another female passes by, she must not pray loudly enough for them to hear."

"How could they be allowed to sing if they aren’t even permitted to hear [each other’s] voices while praying, let alone for anything else."

"[These are] new rules and will be gradually implemented, and God will be helping us in each step we take."

Afghan Minister of Vice and Virtue, Mohammed Khalid Hanafi

Taliban minister Khalid Hanafi said: “God will be helping us in each step we take” Credit: AHMAD SAHEL ARMAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

"Whatever he says is a form of mental torture for us."

"Living in Afghanistan is incredibly painful for us as women. Afghanistan is forgotten, and that’s why they are suppressing us – they are torturing us on a daily basis."

"They say we cannot hear other women’s voices, and I do not understand where these views come from."

Afghan woman, Kabul

The Afghan regime has banned women from working outside the home or attending school and university Credit: MOHSEN KARIMI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Women and girls in Afghanistan have suffered yet another blow to their human rights. There does not appear to be anything left of their civic, civilian and feminine rights as human beings to be withdrawn from them. The Taliban minister of vice and virtue (shades of the Islamic Republic of Iran) issued a directive in the last week. Women must now no longer recite the Qur'an aloud in the presence of other women, for it is haram for their voices to be heard. "If a woman is not permitted to perform Takbit (reading from the Islamic holy book), then how could she be allowed to sing?" So singing is out as well.

According to strict Islam, the voice of a woman is considered awrah; that which must be covered and should not be heard in public, not heard even by other women, according to Minister Mohammad Khalid Hanafi. Known for his Islamist piety in the West, Hanafi is blacklisted by the United Nations (for what that's worth) and sanctioned by the European Union (which is doubtless of zero concern to the man, attuned to the sub-humanity of females).

From August 2021 when Western powers decamped from Afghanistan with their diplomats, their militaries and their human rights groups, and the Taliban moved from the hinterlands of Afghanistan into governing control of the entire country, a series of restrictions have been restored in reflection of how the Taliban ruled that poverty-stricken, benighted, backward country before 2001. Afghan girls are once again barred from attending middle and high schools and universities. They may not work in government and international non-governmental organizations, since 2021.

Social restrictions have been imposed such as the closure of beauty salons; women are prohibited from leaving their homes other than in the presence of a male guardian. When they do exit their home, they must cover their entire bodies and faces. 

"They [the Taliban] are waging an all-out war against us, and we have no one in the world to hear our voices."

"The world has abandoned us. They left us to the Taliban, and whatever happens to us now is a result of Western government policies."

"I feel depressed. The world is advancing in technology and having fun with their lives, but here we cannot even hear each other’s voices."

"They want us not to exist at all, and there’s nothing we can do about it."

"They may succeed at some point, as many are taking their lives due to the pressure."

"They think ruling Afghanistan is only about suppressing women – we didn’t commit a crime by being born as women."

Former female civil servant under previous Western-supported Afghan government

An Afghan woman searches for recyclable materials at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif     Credit: ATIF ARYAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

 

Taliban restrictions intensified in the past two months, recounted Samira, a midwife who traditionally goes by one name. Working in remote villages in western Herat province for eight years, she said female health workers are now forbidden by the Taliban from meeting with the male companions of female patients, complicating health services. "They don't even allow us to speak at checkpoints when we go to work. And in the clinics, we're told not to discuss medical maters with male relatives."

The United Nations special rapporteur of human rights in Afghanistan released a new report where the human rights situation in Afghanistan for women, children and minorities is detailed. A litany of edicts, rules and policies have been imposed, restricting virtually all aspects of women's and girls' lives. They are prevented from exercising fundamental rights; freedom of movement, education, work, health care, freedom of expression and access to justice.

"Other provisions further cement Taliban control over the lives, bodies and behaviour of women and girls."

"Women can be punished for singing or speaking outside their homes, while Muslim women are instructed to cover themselves in front of 'non-believing' women."

"Adult women and men who are not related are forbidden from looking at each other's bodies and faces."

Report, Richard Bennet, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Afghanistan

Armed Taliban security personnel ride motorcycles during a street patrol   Credit: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

China's Harmonious Relations With Its Citizens

"This is textbook United Front Work."

"Using these root-seeking camps to cultivate the next generation of pro-CCP [Chinese Communist Party] supporters and conditioning them to the CCP's political agenda." 

James Leibold, professor/expert on Xinjiang, La Trobe University, Australia

"[The trip represents a] long-term investment [by China, using young people to cultivate a positive image of the CCP and one of its most controversial files]."

"Showing a friendly and smiling face in China has been the primary job of the United Front and its affiliated organizations."

This sort of trip is a trap, in fact, to give an organized tour with organized destinations and limited engagement."

Mehmet Tohti, head, Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project

"[The XPCC Public Security Bureau acts as a government, bureau of prisons, media empire and sprawling corporate holding company in Xinjiang. It is] involved in a pervasive program of egregious rights violations [against the Uyghurs, from extrajudicial imprisonment to social engineering and forced labour]."

"From cradle to grave Uyghur people are subjected to centrally directed indoctrination delivered by the XPCC."

Sheffield Hallam University, U.K. report

Visitors pass a booth for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps at the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing, Sept. 1, 2022. Photo by Ng Han Guan/AP

 

The government of Canada imposed sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) in March of 2021 after accusing it of "gross and systematic human rights violations". The Corps, in its combined role as paramilitary force, local government and business conglomerate is seen as complicit in arbitrary detention of over a million Uyghur people, involved in forced labour and forced sterilization.

That failed to stop a group of young Canadians for whom the XPCC recently acted as guide through he very region where such abuses are commonplace enough to be government policy. Twenty young Chinese Canadians went off on a "roots-seeking" trip this past summer on a ten-day trip organized by the Corps and a branch of China's influence-peddling United Front Work Department. 

 

At the conclusion of their sojourn, an official with the United Front urged the children to "tell the true, beautiful and colourful stories of Xinjiang and the Xinjiang Corps", another United Front division reported online. The trip exemplified the lengths to which Beijing will go to spread its influence globally to alter the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region narrative, in the face of documentation of harsh repression in the region.

 

A demonstrator wearing a mask painted with the colours of the flag of East Turkestan and a hand bearing the colours of the Chinese flag attends a protest of supporters of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority and Turkish nationalists to denounce China's treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims during a deadly riot in July 2009 in Urumqi, in front of the Chinese consulate in Istanbul Photo by OZAN KOSE /AFP/Getty Images

The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese featured the story with accompanying photographs of the trip participants who appear in their early teens, posing in bucolic rural settings, at a dairy plant and in front of the "reclamation museum" of the XPCC. According to the article, "The campers were eager and enthusiastic, pushing the atmosphere of the closing ceremony to a climax".

The tour, according to the association's website, left the children with "a deeper understanding of China"; that as a result "their horizons have been broadened". No one can conceivably argue with that; ethnic Chinese young people having the opportunity to return to the country of their parents' and grandparents' birth, able to view a world quite different from their own in Canada. Whether as a result of that trip they will cant their impressions in favour of the CCP's repressive policies is another story.

Beijing has flooded Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim area, with Han Chinese with a view to tilting the majority status in China's favour, much as they did with Tibet, forcing their sovereignty over that once-Buddhist nation. Beijing seeks 'harmony' among its various inhabitants and total acceptance of the dominant Han Chinese rule. While in Xinjiang, the young visitors to China were introduced to Kazakh herdsmen, resettled in a "beautiful ethnic new village", according to the published article, and "felt the brilliant achievements of the cause of ethnic unity".

The usual Chinese hyperbole. The new show village reminiscent of what dictatorial regimes do, to demonstrate to critics that matters are not really as fraught as their detractors claim. Nazi Germany had invited the Red Cross to a camp where Jews were shown to be living peacefully, before the full force of its savage move to destroy Europe's Jews became full-blown in news outside of the Axis and occupied Nazi countries.

A Chinese knock-off version of Russia's USSR with totalitarian Moscow sending its octopus arms to embrace and strangle its neighbours, ransacking their autonomy as satellites orbiting Russia in a dominating constellation of captured and emasculated quasi nation-states content to be ruled by Stalin's iron hand.

Staff members stand at a booth for the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a state-run authority that handles administrative, economic, and paramilitary functions in parts of western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, at the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing. Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AP