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KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pardoned an Afghan woman serving a 12-year prison sentence for having sex out of wedlock after she was raped by a relative.
Karzai's office said in a statement that the woman and her attacker have agreed to marry. That would reverse an earlier decision by the 19-year-old woman, who had previously refused a judge's offer of freedom if she agreed to marry the rapist.
Her plight was highlighted in a documentary that the European Union blocked because it feared the women featured in the film would be in danger if it were shown.
More than 5,000 people recently signed a petition urging Karzai to release the woman. She had the man's child while in prison and raised her daughter behind bars, which is common among women imprisoned in Afghanistan.
A statement released by Karzai's office says that after hearing from judicial officials, the decision was made to forgive the rest of the sentence she received for having sex out of wedlock, a crime in Afghanistan. The presidential statement did not say when the woman was to be released or how much prison time had been pardoned.
The woman told The Associated Press in an interview last month that she had hoped that attention generated by the EU film might help her get released. With the film blocked, she said that she was losing hope and considering marrying her rapist as a way out. She said her attacker was pressuring her to stop giving interviews.
About half of the 300 to 400 women jailed in Afghanistan are imprisoned for so-called "moral crimes" such as sex outside marriage, or running away from their husbands, according to reports by the United Nations and research organizations. Fleeing husbands isn't considered a crime in Afghanistan.
The EU welcomed the woman's release.
"Her case has served to highlight the plight of Afghan women, who 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime often continue to suffer in unimaginable conditions, deprived of even the most basic human rights," the European Union's Ambassador and Special Representative to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, said.
He said the EU hoped the same mercy would be extended to other women serving similar terms. Usackas said he planned to raise the issue of Afghan women's rights at an international conference on Afghanistan Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned a rape victim who was jailed for adultery, after she apparently agreed to marry her attacker. A government statement said she agreed to the marriage, although her lawyer said she did not wish to marry him. The woman, named as Gulnaz, gave birth in prison to a daughter who has been kept in jail with her.
Senior Afghan officials told the BBC the government put no preconditions on her release. "President Karzai tasked the minister of justice to go and talk to Gulnaz to see what she wants. During her meeting with the minister, she said she will marry the attacker only if her brother marries the attacker's sister," Emal Faizay, a spokesman for President Karzai, told the BBC. "This is a decision by her. I can confirm that there is no precondition set by the Afghan government."
Gulnaz's lawyer told the BBC she hoped the government would allow Gulnaz the freedom to choose whom to marry. "In my conversations with Gulnaz she told me that if she had the free choice she would not marry the man who raped her," said Kimberley Motley. The case has drawn international attention to the plight of many Afghan women 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban.
Human rights groups say hundreds of women in Afghan jails are victims of rape or domestic violence. Earlier this month, Gulnaz said that after she was raped she was charged with adultery. "At first my sentence was two years," she said. "When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn't do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?" The most recent appeal saw her sentence reduced to three years.
'Marriage with conditions'
We are not fighting a war we are fighting a mindset. We have to kill the minds.
KABUL, Afghanistan When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.
The solution holds grave risks for Gulnaz, who uses one name, since the man could be so humiliated that he might kill his accuser, despite the risk of prosecution, or abuse her again.
The decision from the government of President Hamid Karzai is all the more poignant coming as Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, underscoring the unfinished business of advancing womens rights here, and raising questions of what will happen in the future to other women like Gulnaz.
Indeed, what prompted the government to act at all was a grass-roots movement that began after Gulnaz was featured in a recent documentary film commissioned by the European Union, which then blocked the films release.
Supporters of the filmmakers charged that European officials were shying away from exposing the sort of abuses Afghan women routinely suffer for fear of offending their host government.
While Gulnazs pardon is a victory for both Clementine Malpas, a filmmaker who spent nearly six months on the documentary, and for Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer here who took Gulnazs case on a pro bono basis, it also shows that for women in the justice system, the odds are stacked against them.
The banned film, In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail, which was seen by The New York Times, profiles three Afghan women who were in prison. One was Gulnaz, then about 19, who gave birth to the child of her rapist in prison, after initially being sentenced to three years. In a second trial, her sentence was increased to 12 years, but a judge on camera offered her a way out: marry her rapist.
A second woman in the film was abused by her husband and ran away with a man she fell in love with; both are now in prison for adultery. The third woman was a child of 14, who appeared to have been kidnapped but was held as a runaway and has since been returned to her family.
After the film was completed, the European Union banned its release, effectively silencing the women who were willing to tell their stories. The reason given for the ban was that the publicity could harm the women, because an Afghan woman who has had sex out of wedlock can easily become the victim of a so-called honor killing. The women had not given their written consent to be in the film, said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Unions ambassador to Afghanistan.
For Afghan Woman, Justice Runs Into Unforgiving Wall of Custom
KABUL, Afghanistan — When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.
The solution holds grave risks for Gulnaz, who uses one name, since the man could be so humiliated that he might kill his accuser, despite the risk of prosecution, or abuse her again.
The decision from the government of President Hamid Karzai is all the more poignant coming as Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, underscoring the unfinished business of advancing women’s rights here, and raising questions of what will happen in the future to other women like Gulnaz.
Indeed, what prompted the government to act at all was a grass-roots movement that began after Gulnaz was featured in a recent documentary film commissioned by the European Union, which then blocked the film’s release.
Supporters of the filmmakers charged that European officials were shying away from exposing the sort of abuses Afghan women routinely suffer for fear of offending their host government.
While Gulnaz’s pardon is a victory for both Clementine Malpas, a filmmaker who spent nearly six months on the documentary, and for Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer here who took Gulnaz’s case on a pro bono basis, it also shows that for women in the justice system, the odds are stacked against them.
The banned film, “In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail,” which was seen by The New York Times, profiles three Afghan women who were in prison. One was Gulnaz, then about 19, who gave birth to the child of her rapist in prison, after initially being sentenced to three years. In a second trial, her sentence was increased to 12 years, but a judge on camera offered her a way out: marry her rapist.
A second woman in the film was abused by her husband and ran away with a man she fell in love with; both are now in prison for adultery. The third woman was a child of 14, who appeared to have been kidnapped but was held as a runaway and has since been returned to her family.
After the film was completed, the European Union banned its release, effectively silencing the women who were willing to tell their stories. The reason given for the ban was that the publicity could harm the women, because an Afghan woman who has had sex out of wedlock can easily become the victim of a so-called honor killing. The women had not given their written consent to be in the film, said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union’s ambassador to Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/w...s-into-the-static-wall-of-custom.html?_r=1&hp
For Afghan Woman, Justice Runs Into Unforgiving Wall of Custom
KABUL, Afghanistan When the Afghan government announced Thursday that it would pardon a woman who had been imprisoned for adultery after she reported that she had been raped, the decision seemed a clear victory for the many women here whose lives have been ground down by the Afghan justice system.
But when the announcement also made it clear that there was an expectation that the woman, Gulnaz, would agree to marry the man who raped her, the moment instead revealed the ways in which even efforts guided by the best intentions to redress violence against women here run up against the limits of change in a society where cultural practices are so powerful that few can resist them, not even the president.
The solution holds grave risks for Gulnaz, who uses one name, since the man could be so humiliated that he might kill his accuser, despite the risk of prosecution, or abuse her again.
The decision from the government of President Hamid Karzai is all the more poignant coming as Western forces prepare to leave Afghanistan, underscoring the unfinished business of advancing womens rights here, and raising questions of what will happen in the future to other women like Gulnaz.
Indeed, what prompted the government to act at all was a grass-roots movement that began after Gulnaz was featured in a recent documentary film commissioned by the European Union, which then blocked the films release.
Supporters of the filmmakers charged that European officials were shying away from exposing the sort of abuses Afghan women routinely suffer for fear of offending their host government.
While Gulnazs pardon is a victory for both Clementine Malpas, a filmmaker who spent nearly six months on the documentary, and for Kimberley Motley, an American lawyer here who took Gulnazs case on a pro bono basis, it also shows that for women in the justice system, the odds are stacked against them.
The banned film, In-Justice: The Story of Afghan Women in Jail, which was seen by The New York Times, profiles three Afghan women who were in prison. One was Gulnaz, then about 19, who gave birth to the child of her rapist in prison, after initially being sentenced to three years. In a second trial, her sentence was increased to 12 years, but a judge on camera offered her a way out: marry her rapist.
A second woman in the film was abused by her husband and ran away with a man she fell in love with; both are now in prison for adultery. The third woman was a child of 14, who appeared to have been kidnapped but was held as a runaway and has since been returned to her family.
After the film was completed, the European Union banned its release, effectively silencing the women who were willing to tell their stories. The reason given for the ban was that the publicity could harm the women, because an Afghan woman who has had sex out of wedlock can easily become the victim of a so-called honor killing. The women had not given their written consent to be in the film, said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Unions ambassador to Afghanistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/w...s-into-the-static-wall-of-custom.html?_r=1&hp
As the West leaves, just watch the human right abuses increase. Watch what happens to women then.
Please we won the hearts and minds of the people long ago but then we let those corrupt guys get into office because they promised to stop shooting if we gave them power. Soo rather than risk more violence we put them in power. Guess what. They are still shooting. So ultimately we should have killed until the mindset was as dead as the people swearing to kill us.
Here is the problem. We get the people on our side. The enemy runs into pakistan because Americans are here. We dont arm or train the people the President says hey good job now come back, so we do. Then the enemy comes back out of Pakistan and kills anyone who helped us. Then we go back and it repeats over and over until eventually nobody wants to help us because in the end if they help they die. This is the great strategy of the US in Afghanistan.
I believe that unless America takes a no prisoner approach and destroys the enemies we are far better off leaving there today because we have no hope of victory without a drastic change in the strategic approach.
To think that our young men are getting killed and maimed to support this backward and corrupt government sickens me to the core. Time to stop interfering in the politics of backward countries and leave the Islamists to kill each other!
A woman sentenced to 12 in prison after being raped by her relative in Afghanistan has been freed, according to CNN.
The woman, identified only as Gulnaz, gained international attention last week after President Hamid Karzai pardoned her for sex out of wedlock. The president's office also released a statement saying the woman had promised to marry her attacker, sparking international outcry.
Reuters reports that the 21-year-old woman gave birth to a child of the rape while imprisoned in Kabul. She was reportedly raped by her cousin's husband in 2009.
Gulnaz recounted that day in an interview with CNN:
"He had filthy clothes on as he does metal and construction work. When my mother went out, he came into my house and he closed doors and windows. I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth."
Wait till you start seeing the public hanging on football goal post again....it will happen.
