Human Rights Festival: “Speaking and sensitizing the public about what is happening is the best weapon against the Taliban”

MILAN – “I’m here to talk to you about human rights, especially women’s rights in a corner of the world called Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there are two distinct groups: men and women. Now, looking at you, I think how lucky you are to be able to be here, sitting next to each other, listening to other people’s thoughts. In Afghanistan this would be impossible for a woman, she would not even have the reason to do it ”. Talking about her is Fatima Haidari, Afghanistan’s first female tour guide when the capture of Kabul by the Taliban in 2021 forced her to flee. Her intervention took place on the occasion of the opening of the eighth edition of Human Rights Festivalscheduled from today to May 6 live at the Holocaust memorial of Milan and Cineteca Milano MIC-Interactive Museum of Cinema – and online on the website of Festival.

When a 21-year-old girl was stoned to death in the street. “When the Taliban took Herat two years ago – added Fatima Haidari – this had repercussions on the whole country, especially on women’s rights. In the last twenty years, many women have fought for themselves, for their rights, and have managed to bring about great changes in Afghanistan; but many of them have also lost their lives for it. An example is Farkhunda, a 21-year-old religious leader attacked, stoned and thrown in the street because she was preaching; or again – Fatima recalled – a girl even younger than me executed by the whole village because she ran away with the man she loved instead of submitting to her father’s will of an arranged marriage with a very old man. Girls targeted and killed on their way to school; the girls’ schools themselves bombed”.

With the Taliban, everything changed overnight. “Things were slowly changing for the better in recent years, we fought so much as women to ensure basic rights, such as education, and we were happy to do so – continues Fatima Haidari ” With the arrival of the Taliban in 2021, all that changed in one night. We just woke up one August morning to the sound of bullets and Taliban sirens 21 years after their ouster. The luckier ones, like me, managed to escape from Afghanistan; the women who remained there, on the other hand, were removed from schools, universities and bars: they are forbidden to participate in public life, buried in their own homes. So it doesn’t matter if we have different histories and backgrounds. We are human, we all have the right to live in freedom. And we who have this fortune today, must think of those who do not have this fortune, speak and raise awareness. This is the best weapon against the Taliban” – concludes Haidari.