EDITORIAL: Who’s marching for Afghan women?

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban introduced a new “Law on the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice,” last week. It silences women’s voices and mandates that they cover their entire body with clothing. It places even more restrictions on their ability to move around unless accompanied by a male relative and bans their voices from being heard in public.

In short, women in Afghanistan have become nonentities. So where are the voices raised in their defence here in Canada? Where is CUPE National Vice-President Fred Hahn? Why isn’t he at the barricades declaring his revulsion at this horrific suppression of women’s rights? His feed on X is full of concern for Gaza and Palestine, but where’s his concern for the women of Afghanistan, who’ve been shut out of any kind of public life? Where’s Sarah Jama, the Ontario MPP tossed out of the NDP for her outspoken support of Hamas after the October 7 terror attacks, murder and hostage-taking of Israelis? Surely she should be waving her keffiyeh and demanding an end to this appalling treatment of women. Why the silence about Afghan women? Sure, Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly posted on X that this country “condemns” the new law.



It is, she said, “another attempt to silence the people of Afghanistan – especially women and girls. These women and girls have a right to be heard and seen and there is no virtue in silencing them.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reposted her message.

This was the predictable outcome when U.S. President Joe Biden precipitated the chaotic withdrawal of U.

S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021 and Canada followed suit, abandoning Afghans who’d worked for this country. The Taliban walked back in.

The women and girls of Afghanistan had achieved a level of freedom. They were working. They were going to school.

For a fleeting moment, they had a future. Now it’s evaporated. There are credible reports that senior members of the Taliban are sending their daughters overseas for an education.

Surely not. That would be a level of hypocrisy reserved for, well, those “progressive” people in the West, who spout concern for women’s rights and yet are eerily silent when it comes to the awful fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls. No one’s marching for them.

Does no one care?.