[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 139 (Tuesday, October 16, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1903]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       OPPRESSION OF AFGHAN WOMEN

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. EARL F. HILLIARD

                               of alabama

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, October 16, 2001

  Mr. HILLIARD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my distress over 
the oppression of Afghan women. These women, who only won their freedom 
for a few years in all of history, have been driven back into 
oppression by a brutal, violent and blindly ignorant regime. Forced by 
the Taliban out of the schools allowed by former ruler Nur Mohammed 
Taraki, women are now uneducated. Women cannot work, but can be forced 
to beg for bread.
  Women are forbidden to sing or listen to music, and will be viciously 
beaten if seen in public with men who are not relatives. Women in 
today's Afghanistan cannot be treated by a male doctor., and will be 
killed if they are treated by one. The life expectancy of Afghan women 
is 43, almost half that of American women. This vicious oppression is 
not the will of God or of any decent man.
  Women have been oppressed throughout the ages by every society on 
earth, but have gone a long way toward gaining freedom and dignity. 
Afghanistan's brutal rulers and their fundamentalist counterparts in 
other religions must not be allowed to destroy the lives, the futures, 
and the honor of women.
  This Congress must support these desperate victims and any 
counterparts they have in any other part of the world. People of faith 
from every nation and every religion must unite to end all use of 
twisted religious rhetoric, to oppress any person. We must apply this 
principle to Afghanistan now, and to our own lives everyday.

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