A woman who shared an online video of herself singing outside of her home in Afghanistan told The Associated Press on Thursday that she will continue the practice to protest the recent passage of updated Islamist morality laws in the Central Asian country.
“No command, system, or man can close the mouth of an Afghan woman,” she defiantly told the news outlet when discussing her rendition of a 39-second anti-Taliban song that she publicized on Tuesday.
The 23-year-old from the northeastern province of Badakhshan was responding to last week’s decision by the ruling regime to enact the “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.”
The repressive measure requires females in the theocracy to cover their faces and bodies in public, remain silent in places that are not their residences, and forces them to be accompanied by a male relative when using municipal transportation or traveling.
The restrictions join previous discriminatory directives from Kabul, which include prohibiting girls from attending school after the age of 12 and the barring of women from working in most professions.
The new law also compels men to maintain facial hair, mandates attendance at Muslim religious observances, and bans such activities as alcohol consumption, celebrating secular holidays, gambling, listening to music, or wearing neckties.
The rebellious vocalist, whose first name was redacted by her interviewers, declared at the end of her performance that “a woman’s voice is not intimate,” seemingly to criticize the government’s stated reason for their actions.
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