A Woman In Afghanistan Was Shot And Blinded By Unknown Men Because She Got A Job. What Kind Of A World Is This?
Whenever the irate feminist in me comes to the fore, I am often shut down by people who believe that women now have it all easy and good. Comparing our pretty bad situation to the worse one we had decades ago, society tries to console us by enlisting the contrasts where they believe that with women now having jobs, or the freedom to move around, the equality is a reality. However, we are far from living in a world that is just or kind to women, and we say this after the hundreds of hate crime cases that get reported everyday. The recent one being where a woman was shot at and blinded, all because she got a job.
A chilling incident that took place in Afghanistan, a country where women still struggle to have even basic rights, a 33-year-old woman, Khatera, was shot at, stabbed and blinded by three currently unknown, unidentified men after she left her job at a police station in Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province. Appointed as a crime branch officer, Khatera had started going to the station just a few months ago when she was brutally attacked.
When she woke up in the hospital, unable to see anything, Khatera was still unaware of who could have done this to her. She told Reuters that, “I asked the doctors, why I can’t see anything? They told me that my eyes are still bandaged because of the wounds. But at that moment, I knew my eyes had been taken from me.”
The last thing 33-year-old Khatera saw were the three men on a motorcycle who attacked her just after she left her job at a police station in Afghanistan’s central Ghazni province, shooting at her and stabbing her with a knife in the eyes. https://t.co/egN4olNW12
— Luis (@2536luis) November 10, 2020
Also Read : Video Of A Chinese Man Beating His Wife To Death On A Street In Broad Daylight Goes Viral. People Just Stood And Watched As The Woman Was Killed.
While the first doubt from Khatera and the police authorities went on to Taliban, the radical group of Afghanistan. But they denied any involvement to the case and said the assailants acted on a tip-off from her father who vehemently opposed her working outside the home. And to imagine that a father who was so against the idea of her daughter could want such a gruesome punishment for her daughter, left us shook.
Khatera went on to comment on the matter and said, “I wish I had served in police at least a year. If this had happened to me after that, it would have been less painful. It happened too soon … I only got to work and live my dream for three months.”
Sadly, it isn’t the first time that women have faced a backlash or such attacks upon taking jobs in the society. Still living in an orthodox mindset, one where watching women work goes against their dignity, women are being threatened and assaulted for taking up jobs, especially in public roles like that of an officer. Such attacks have now risen a human rights concern for women, who can’t possibly keep paying the price for a male fragile ego.
Afghan woman shot and blinded for working ‘outside the house’#Afghanistan #AfghanWomen #Khatera #WomensRightshttps://t.co/iB6sYA8lKU pic.twitter.com/nHhVjlpnek
— Ariana News (@ArianaNews_) November 10, 2020
It is heartbreaking to see that the society finds itself so riled up and threatened by the idea of women walking shoulder to shoulder with men that they are willing to take their sight or their life for it. Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International’s Afghanistan campaigner also spoke on the matter as she said, “Though the situation for Afghan women in public roles has always been perilous, the recent spike in violence across the country has made matters even worse.”
Meanwhile Khatera who lost everything in a flick of a second – her dream, her career, her sight says, “Many times, as I went to duty, I saw my father following me … he started contacting the Taliban in the nearby area and asked them to prevent me from going to my job.” She went on to also reveal that her father provided the Taliban with a copy of her ID card to prove she worked for the police and that he had called her throughout the day she was attacked to find out her location.
That a father would get this done to his own daughter is perhaps the frightening reality of just how much danger women are in today, and that the fight for feminism is long from over.
