England’s males’s cricket team is ready to face Afghanistan on Feb. 26 within the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy group stage.
However, girls’s rights activists have known as for England to forfeit its shot glory out of protest for Afghanistan’s ongoing human rights abuses. The Women’s Rights Network (WRN) put out a statement on Tuesday, calling for not solely the forfeiture of the February championship match, however any sports activities competitors towards an Afghanistan nationwide staff.
“Women’s Rights Network requires England to forfeit the match. In truth, we name on our legislators and sports activities governing our bodies to go additional. We name for: [UK Prime Minister] Keir Starmer to order a boycott of all Afghanistan fixtures in any sport, the [England Cricket Team] to forfeit all matches towards the Afghanistan males’s cricket staff in any match, gamers and coaches to look at their consciences – the ladies in your households are free to decorate how they please, be educated, take jobs, journey, have financial institution accounts, communicate and sing. How are you able to in all conscience play a rustic that denies girls their fundamental human rights?” the group wrote.
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Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer addresses members on the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, England on Tuesday. (AP)
“Pride within the staff shirt consists of satisfaction in your nation’s document on standing up for human rights and towards dictators who bask within the kudos of sporting success. What is going on to the ladies of Afghanistan is appalling. Any sportsman of conscience ought to do what is true: Boycott Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan has been beneath management of the Taliban since August 2021, after President Biden ordered a withdrawal of the U.S. navy. The withdrawal resulted within the demise of 13 U.S. armed service members, and the near-immediate takeover of the nation’s capital of Kabul by Taliban forces. Another 45 U.S. troopers have been harmed, and greater than 170 Afghan civilians have been killed as nicely.
After the Taliban takeover of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, the nation’s financial system “principally collapsed,” in keeping with the UNDP, largely as a result of worldwide funding via authorities donor plans, just like the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, have been shut down.
The Taliban takeover has resulted in notably appalling remedy of girls within the nation.
Under Sharia Law, girls will not be allowed to maneuver round in public area until they’re within the firm of a male family member. In common, they’re solely allowed to depart their home for pressing issues and need to put on full veils in the event that they do.
In August, the Taliban rulers issued a ban on girls’s voices and naked faces in public beneath new legal guidelines accepted by the supreme chief in efforts to fight vice and promote advantage.
Women are obliged to cowl themselves in entrance of non-Muslim women and men to keep away from being corrupted. A lady’s voice is deemed intimate and so shouldn’t be heard singing, reciting, or studying aloud in public. It is forbidden for girls to take a look at males they don’t seem to be associated to by blood or marriage and vice versa.
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Afghanistan’s Naveen-ul-Haq celebrates with teammates after a dismissal in the course of the second T20 worldwide cricket match between Zimbabwe and Afghanistan on the Harare Sports Club in Harare on December 13, 2024. (Jekesai NJIKIZANA/AFP)
Women in Afghanistan have additionally been banned from attending secondary college and, since 2022 they’ve been banned from finding out in any respect. There are some programs accessible to girls through on-line instructing, however the feminine college students will not be allowed to take exams.
In July, a United Nations report stated the ministry was contributing to a local weather of worry and intimidation amongst Afghans via edicts and the strategies used to implement them.
“Given the a number of points outlined within the report, the place expressed by the de facto authorities that this oversight will probably be rising and increasing provides trigger for important concern for all Afghans, particularly girls and women,” stated Fiona Frazer, the top of the human rights service on the UN mission in Afghanistan.
The Taliban rejected the UN report.
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