ISLAMABAD (AP) — A woman who posted a video of herself singing outdoors in Afghanistan to protest the Taliban’s morality laws, which include a ban on women’s voices in public, said Thursday she won’t be silenced.
The 23-year-old graduate is from the northeastern province of Badakhshan and only gave her last name, Efat, to avoid reprisals.
“No command, system or man can close the mouth of an Afghan woman,” she told The Associated Press. “If you close one part of the body of an Afghan woman, another part will work.”
The Taliban last week issued the country’s first set of laws to prevent vice and promote virtue. They include a requirement for a woman to conceal her face, body and voice outside the home.
The laws have triggered widespread condemnation and accusations that the Taliban are erasing women from public life and granting broad powers to enforcers from the Vice and Virtue Ministry. The Taliban reject the accusations.
Afghan women both inside and outside the country have posted videos of themselves singing in protest at the new laws.
Efat’s face is barely visible in the 39-second video, which was recorded by her older sister and posted to social media on Tuesday. She wears a dark top, a light blue scarf and sunglasses. She sings outdoors, an act prohibited under the new laws.
“Because we are in Afghanistan, and the region has less freedom and more fear, if a sound is heard, it will be shut down,” Efat said. “While I was singing, I had the same fear. That if someone heard it, it would be the last time I sang.”
She chose the song because of its message of defiance, protest and strength: “I am not that weak willow that trembles in every wind/I am from Afghanistan/I remember that day when I opened the cage/I took my head out of the cage and sang drunkenly.”
At the end of the video, she says: “A woman’s voice is not intimate.” It’s a direct reference to the Taliban laws and what they say are the reason for a woman’s voice to be concealed outside the home.
“We will remain stronger than before,” she said.
Efat protested in the city and market when the full veil, or burqa, became mandatory. She speaks openly and criticizes the Taliban on her social media pages. The local Taliban have told her family that she should not do this.
“There is obviously fear. But Afghan women carry the same fear in our lives for the freedom of our voice,” she said.
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