Wahida Amiri: I had a simple dream
Before the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, 36-year-old Wahida Amiri was a fervent librarian in Kabul. Her library was a sanctuary for young women who wanted to read and discuss women’s rights and what they needed to do to gain more rights.
Her life, like that of all Afghan women, changed overnight when the Taliban denied women the basic rights to education and work. Amiri could no longer continue her job but she was determined not to remain silent. Like many women, she took to the streets in protest of the Taliban’s regime of gender apartheid.
When the Taliban clamped down on those peaceful protests, Amiri was arrested in a safe house in Kabul on February 11, 2022, and was detained for more than two weeks. While in the prison, she was severely tortured.
Soon after her release on February 28, 2022, she fled Afghanistan for a life in exile. Now based in the United States, she continues to fight for women’s rights in Afghanistan. On July 30, Wahida Amiri, along with Metra Mehran, a woman rights activist, and Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch, appeared in front of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. Congress and demanded the recognition of gender apartheid in Afghanistan.
Below is her full speech:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
I must say that it is not easy for me to speak here. You may understand this from the trembling in my voice and the dyspnea in my breathing. This is because I was never supposed to and did not want to be present and give a speech in such spaces. I was a simple librarian, and the only thing I wanted from life was to own and manage a library in my city. If I am here today, it is partly for this reason. I know that the connection between the two may not seem reasonable. But, before explaining the relationship between the two, please allow me to tell you what I have done chasing this simple dream and what has happened to me.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the pursuit of this simple wish, I have gone to the street facing the biggest terrorist group in history, the Taliban, which is armed to the teeth with American weapons. I have experienced violence, the least of which was tear gas; I have been persecuted; I have been warned and threatened repeatedly; then I was kidnapped and imprisoned by this terrorist group. I have been questioned at midnight; I have been dehumanized and forced to confess. My house and family were taken hostage, and, in the end, I was exiled.
The details of each of these hardships can be the subject of many other speeches. But I want to say that, yes, all this happened because I, as a woman, dreamed of having a library. It happened to thousands of other women and me in Afghanistan for having such a simple dream, ironically, after 70 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I’ve shared, my struggle here is fueled by the pursuit of a cherished, personal dream – to create and tend to a library of my own. Another and more significant part of this struggle is for the people who have been deprived of all their human rights by the Taliban – the millions of girls who are prevented from going to school and university and for the hundreds of thousands of women who are forcibly unemployed and imprisoned within their house. Yes, the biggest part of this fight is for the people who have been dehumanized in every sense and left alone for themselves under the rule of a terrorist group armed to the teeth. The struggle is for women who have been living under the rule of a gender apartheid regime for three years and who have been deprived of all their rights and are faced with exclusion, segregation and isolation, harassment, and oppression in all spheres of life.
I am disappointed to say that all of this was partially possible with the cooperation of the United States government. Despite the warnings of women of Afghanistan and other democratic movements that the Taliban are terrorists and unchangeable, the United States government entered negotiations with a terrorist group and signed a “peace treaty” in Doha with secret annexes. Furthermore, in the past three years, the United States government has provided billions of dollars of American taxpayers’ money in the name of humanitarian aid to this terrorist group. All the money sent to Afghanistan enabled the Taliban to consolidate their power, dictatorship, and gender apartheid regime.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is against all international standards, human rights values, and the humane ideals of the people of the United States as well as the people of Afghanistan. I ask the respected members of the Human Rights Commission and the United States Congress to take the following steps in support of women and people of Afghanistan based on human dignity and human rights, international human rights conventions and documents, and in the light of the binding orders of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court:
· Based on the seventh and eighth articles of the Rome Statute, the crimes of the Taliban terrorist group against the people of Afghanistan, especially the women of Afghanistan, should be recognized as crimes against humanity.
· I ask you to recognize the current gender apartheid regime in Afghanistan as a crime against humanity and the rule of the Taliban as a gender apartheid system.
· Do not recognize the Taliban as a state and do not allow American taxpayers’ money to serve a terrorist group.
· The treatment of ethnic, linguistic, gender, intellectual, and cultural groups by the Taliban in Afghanistan is against all humane and democratic values. This group seeks to eradicate, remove, and purify all individuals and groups that differ from themselves. I want you to be a true and democratic manifestation of the will of the American people by condemning the Taliban and changing the current foreign policy of the United States towards this group.
Thank you,
