Afghan War Commission Should Examine US Role on Women’s Rights — HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

None of the 14 men and 2 women appointed as commissioners are experts on women’s rights, and none are Afghan or from the Afghan diaspora.

Afghan women chant during a women’s rights protest against Taliban abuses, Kabul, Afghanistan, August 13,

by Heather Barr Associate Director, Women’s Rights Divisionat Human Rights Watch | Follow heatherbarr1 *SOURCE: Human Rights Watch. Go to ORIGINAL.

⚡️In Afghanistan, the Taliban dispersed a women's rally by firing into the air. There are casualties, AFP reports.

Residents of Kabul spoke out against the discrimination that they face under the new regime in the country. pic.twitter.com/jcZ7HozFSj
— FLASH (@Flash_news_ua) August 13, 2022

Overwhelmingly Male Panel Lacks Necessary Expertise 2022.

And contrary to previous pledges, US focus on evacuating Afghans who worked with US troops left women – including activists – out in the cold; only 7 to 10 percent of Afghan applicants for US special immigrant visas are women.

“We will not abandon you. We will stand with you always,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a group of Afghan women in 2010. Clinton pledged that year that the rights of Afghan women would not be “sacrificed” in pursuit of a deal with the Taliban.

http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2021/08/21/rawa-responds-to-the-taliban-takeover.html https://mobile.twitter.com/RealRA

A year after the fall of Kabul, the dreams Afghan girls and women were encouraged to dream have been shattered: the Taliban bans girls from attending secondary schools and women from most jobs, making day-to-day survival increasingly difficult. Women’s and girls’ rights to free movement, association, and expression have been severely curbed.

Afghan War Commission Should Examine US Role on Women’s Rights — HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

It Takes a Whole Village! / Sri Lanka/ ‘Gota Go Gama’—What We Learned in the Occupation Movement

On July 9, a combative crowd stormed the Presidential Palace, the Presidential Secretariat, and the residence of the Prime Minister, forcing Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

by CrimethInc. via thefreeonline 7 Sept 2022

In the following text, a Sri Lankan anarchist who participated in the protest movement that toppled president Gotabaya Rajapaksa reflects on Gota Go Gama (“Gota Go Home”), the occupation at the heart of the movement.

April 9 was the first day of the protests at Galle F ace, which led to the establishment of the occupation.

Gama is Sinhala for “village”; the Tamil equivalent is Gramam. Starting on April 9, protesters established a permanent occupation at Galle Face, the half-kilometer-long oceanside park in downtown Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.

You can read interviews with participants in this movement here and a reflection on its relation to other uprisings of our time here. The author of the following text signed it “the Gadfly.” Photographs courtesy of Riyal Riffai.

A demonstrator in a car parade on April 4, 2022.

It Takes a Whole Village

“It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. Gota Go Gama was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…