From The Jurist, May 8:
Afghan parliament descends into chaos as lawmakers attack female legislator
The floor of the Afghan parliament has witnessed its first outbreak of violence, with lawmakers physically and verbally assaulting a controversial female legislator who called several of the country’s mujahedeen leaders criminals unfit for public office. Female colleagues of 27-year old anti-fundamentalist women’s health worker Malalai Joya threw plastic bottles at her and male lawmakers insulted her and allegedly made death threats in the wake of a speech Sunday. Joya was surrounded by a cordon of moderates and escaped unhurt.In December Joya caused a furor shortly after the opening of Afghanistan’s first democratically-elected parliament in thirty years by calling for all of the country’s human rights abusers and “criminal warlords” to be brought to justice. Members of the new parliament included Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, who has been accused of war crimes and Abdul Salaam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander…. Pajhwok Afghan News has local coverage.
See also the London Times report on the newspage of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), in which Joya says: “I have lots of threats. I have had people call me to threaten me, and in Kabul have to stay in a different house every night.”
See our last posts on Afghanistan, the status of Afghan women and Malalai Joya.
