[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21263-21264]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     VIOLENCE AGAINST AFGHAN WOMEN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) for yielding.
  This morning a very important development occurred in the work of the 
world to build toward a post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan that will be 
democratic. A group of Afghan women asked to be included in talks 
concerning a new democratic government in Afghanistan.
  Women are the oppressed people of Afghanistan. There can be no 
freedom there if the United Nations and the United States do not yield 
to this plea of Afghan women.
  I believe I know what segregation, racial segregation is because I 
grew up in the segregated District of Columbia. I believe I know what 
racial apartheid was in South Africa. I was one of the first four 
people to go into the embassy which led to many people being arrested 
and finally sanctions and the end of apartheid.
  But what we are seeing in Afghanistan is something I have never seen 
up close before. It is gender apartheid. That is very different from 
gender inequality which is, of course, universal. Gender apartheid as 
we are seeing in Afghanistan is much like the stigmatization we saw in 
Nazi Germany or to slavery. Indeed, the women in Afghanistan have been 
essentially converted into slaves. All the elements of slavery are 
there. They cannot work. They cannot go to school. They cannot go to 
universities. They cannot even leave home except in the company of a 
man. It has become shameful to be a woman. You are covered from head to 
toe, not just your face and head as so many religions require, but 
every part of you. It is shameful to be seen as a woman.
  All the physical aspects of slavery are there, public flogging, 
selling into prostitution, women taken by commanders as wives, killing, 
indeed, for those who violate Taliban decrees.
  What makes this especially tragic in Afghanistan is that pre-Taliban, 
in some way, Afghan women were more advanced than women in most 
advanced countries. Half of the university students were women, 40 
percent of the doctors, half the health care workers, 70 percent of the 
teachers. All that is gone. That is all merit and hard work brought 
down.
  The Afghan Constitution guaranteed freedom and equality to women, as 
our Constitution does not explicitly. That was suspended in 1992. Now, 
75 percent of the refugees are women and children.
  I am not surprised that a regime propped by people who use planes as 
missiles to take down innocent people would treat their own women as 
chattel. I would be surprised, I would be very disappointed and I do 
not believe we can let happen if our government does not insist that 
the liberation of

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Afghanistan must include the liberation of its women. Any future 
government talks must have the women of Afghanistan at the table.

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