KABUL: (MEP) -With a bill that would be devastating for women’s rights about to hit the desk of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, more than 1 million people around the world have signed a petition urging him to veto the proposed law, which would protect perpetrators of domestic violence, child abuse, forced marriages and marital rape.
In addition to the million-person petition more than 179,000 people have sent President Hamid Karzai personal messages asking him not to sign the new rule into law.
Ian Bassin, Campaign Director at Avaaz, said, “If President Karzai puts his name to this law, he’ll be relegating countless women and girls to a life of rape and abuse. If he’s serious about building a more secure future for Afghanistan and serious about his legacy, he won’t sign this bill until this dangerous amendment is removed.”
The new Afghan Criminal Procedure Code passed by the Parliament contains a provision that would prohibit relatives of a person accused of a crime from testifying in that accused’s case. If enacted, the provision would make prosecuting crimes such as domestic violence, child abuse and marital rape nearly impossible, since more than 85% of violence against women and children occurs in the home, where often the only witnesses are relatives.
By depriving judges and prosecutors of the ability to call these relatives as witnesses, the new Criminal Procedure Code would protect those who abuse women and children. As those crimes become harder to prosecute, incidents of forced marriage, marital rape and child abuse are likely to rise.
Among the hundreds of thousands of messages to President Karzai collected by Avaaz, one Afghan woman wrote to Karzai, saying, “As a six year old child I was tortured, burned third degree and sexually assaulted by the son of my host family where I had been sent to recover from starvation. I would have died an agonizing mental death if one courageous person had not stood up for me and reported the crime to the authorities, and thus brought the perpetrator to justice. (…) To bar the testimony of the only possible witnesses gives carte blanche to torturers and violators (..) I call on you, the President of Afghanistan, to work with the Upper House to reject the proposed Amendment to Article 26 and to extend the protection of the Rule of Law to all Afghans.”
