{"id":10110,"date":"2018-11-02T14:36:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T12:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=10110"},"modified":"2018-11-01T14:38:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-01T12:38:32","slug":"afghan-women-still-jailed-alongside-murderers-for-failing-virginity-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2018\/11\/afghan-women-still-jailed-alongside-murderers-for-failing-virginity-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan women still jailed alongside murderers for ‘failing’ virginity test"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE GUARDIAN<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Fariba Housaini in Mazar-i-Sharif<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

A protester holds a placard during a protest against virginity tests in New Delhi, India. Photograph: Fayaz Kabli\/Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n

Seven months ago, 18-year-old Bahara* was imprisoned for failing a test that she should never have had to undergo.<\/p>\n

\n

Bahara had run away from home to meet a man she had been in a relationship with. They had never met, but were in contact through calls and messages. That night, when they met for the first time, he raped her. But when she reported the rape to the police, instead of support, she was taken to hospital to undergo a virginity test \u2013 a practice that was banned in\u00a0Afghanistan\u00a0in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on my period that day, too, and I pleaded for them not to send me. They wouldn\u2019t listen,\u201d Bahara says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the doctors would at least take me to a private place for the test. But it was done in a room full of people \u2013 doctors, nurses, and even prying visitors and other patients who wanted a closer look at my naked body. At that moment, I would have preferred to die,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A female doctor performed the test using her two fingers, checking if the hymen was intact. After enduring the physical and emotional ordeal, Bahara was told she needed to undergo another test. \u201cBecause I was on my period they couldn\u2019t gather accurate results,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Bahara is now an inmate at Mazar-i-Sharif high security prison in Balkh province. Many women have been imprisoned here for what are considered \u201cmoral crimes\u201d, which include running away from home and having sex before marriage. Most will have had to undergo virginity tests and many women will spend months in jail because they failed them.<\/p>\n

Women\u00a0imprisoned for running away have usually fled dire circumstances, from domestic violence to forced sex work, and women categorised as \u201cmoral criminals\u201d are jailed alongside convicted murderers.<\/p>\n

Now campaigners hope that the passing of a\u00a0public health policy to ban<\/a>virginity testing in hospitals and clinics will bring significant change. The testing, which has been\u00a0condemned as degrading and discriminatory<\/a>, was officially banned in 2016, but that hasn\u2019t stopped police taking women and girls for testing or stopped hospitals and clinics performing tests.<\/p>\n

At Mazar-i-Sharif prison, in a small courtyard smelling heavily of cigarettes, women talk on phones, pace up and down, wash clothes and eat fruit. Inside, a female psychologist leads a group therapy session, organised by Marie Stopes International.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Following the announcement of the new policy, Marie Stopes, with funding from the Swedish government, will work with healthcare professionals in every Afghan province to ensure they know about the ban, and implement it.<\/p>\n

The twice-weekly sessions at the prison are a chance for women to share their feelings about how they came to be in the prison, to build trust and discuss their hopes and fears for the future. The room is decorated with drawings that reflect their aspirations for life after jail.<\/p>\n

But even though they will eventually leave the prison, the stigma of their \u201ccrime\u201d will remain. Bahara longs to be released, but she is fearful of what awaits on the outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure I can rejoin society and go back to living a normal life. My being here has damaged my family\u2019s reputation, and I truly fear my father might kill me once I\u2019m out,\u201d she says. \u201cEven if a person is a criminal, they\u2019re still a human. Human beings don\u2019t deserve to go through what I went through.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fear of being accused of not being a virgin permeates society.<\/p>\n

At a beauty parlour in Kabul, Hosnia is worried about her wedding night. Staring down at her shaking hands, decorated with intricate henna patterns in preparation for her wedding the next day, she says a female relative didn\u2019t bleed on her wedding night, and was punished for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if they\u2019re virgins, some girls just don\u2019t bleed after their first time. But here, it\u2019s widely believed that if you don\u2019t bleed, you\u2019re not pure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Hosnia was a virgin, she was terrified that she might not bleed \u2013 a concern shared by many women in Afghanistan. In most cases, a bride who doesn\u2019t bleed is \u201creturned\u201d to her father by her husband, divorced immediately, or in some cases even killed. \u201cI\u2019ve never talked about virginity with my fianc\u00e9 before,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Before the national public health policy was passed, progress was slowly being made in parts of the capital to stop virginity testing and arrests for \u201cmoral crimes\u201d. Colonel Bismillah Taban, police commander for District 9 in Kabul,\u00a0banned police<\/a>\u00a0from sending women for testing, paving the way for further progress. Before he took up his post, he said, women who were seen by police in public places with other men were immediately suspected of having sexual intercourse, and sent for testing.<\/p>\n

The Afghanistan Forensic Science Organisation, an NGO, says: \u201cHymen examination doesn\u2019t only have a negative psychological impact on girls and women. It is a dangerous test, which in some cases causes physical pain, damage to the hymen, bleeding and infections.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The organisation\u2019s director, Mohammad Ashraf Bakhteyari, says that not only does virginity testing violate human rights, \u201cbleeding is not a sign of a hymen\u2019s existence or absence\u201d. But this information is not widely known, as too few Afghan school students receive any kind of sex education.<\/p>\n

Zahra Sepehr, director of the organisation Development and Support of Afghan Women and Children, says the school curriculum needs to change. \u201cIf sex education isn\u2019t taught in an academic environment, our children will learn about it through porn or other unreliable sources,\u201d she says. \u201cSchools have to conduct meetings with parents and teachers to encourage discussion about adultery, sex education and hormone changes. These discussions will then raise enlightened, educated students who are aware of their bodies. This will also go a long way to discouraging boys from inflicting violence or unwanted attention on women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back at Mazar-i-Sharif, Bahara is trying to remain positive. \u201cI want to be hopeful and really wait for the day to see my family happy again and hug my mother, as I miss her a lot. In the future, I would love to continue my education and become a teacher to educate my students, especially girls, so they do not face what I experienced in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

*Names have been changed to protect\u00a0<\/em>identities<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From domestic violence to forced sex work, and women categorised as \u201cmoral criminals\u201d are jailed alongside convicted murderers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":10112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,43,11,17,49],"tags":[979,126,147],"class_list":["post-10110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-human-rights-online-library","category-issues","category-women","category-womens-rights","tag-sex-education","tag-sexual-violence","tag-womens-human-rights","country-afghanistan","Documents-statements-multimedia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10115,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions\/10115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}