Tradition and Culture 2.0 : Afghanistan
"I find that there was little evidence provided to support that the respondent knowingly observed and performed virginity tests for the purpose of having women convicted of zina."Immigration and Refugee Board Appeal Division, Canada"The authorities wanted us to check her virginity and also to find out if there were any signs of sexual intercourse. This is not an uncommon occurrence in Afghanistan."
“In Islamic law and tradition, a woman is forbidden from having any sexual relationship before marriage."
"Both the law and the public punishes women for such ‘sins’ and it is called zina."
Refugee claim, Saida Ahmadi Afghan M.D., refugee claimant
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| A young girl holds a rose during an event marking the International Women’s Day in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, March 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul) |
In Afghanistan the criminal code lists a crime called "zina". This describes a societal criminal sin that only women can be guilty of. And it is a sin that ostracizes women, criminalizes them, and ruins their lives after imprisoning them. Zina is the crime of pre-marriage sex. And to identify women who are guilty of this crime, female doctors are tasked with conducting "virginity tests". A virginity test is incontestably a humiliating ritual of shaming a woman whose behaviour deserves that she be degraded with a digital probe of the vagina to ensure that the hymen is intact.
Before arriving in Canada to make a refugee clain in 2017, Saida Ahmadi, an Afghan female medical doctor, worked at a hospital in northern Afghanistan. There, virginity tests become court evidence used by prosecuters charging women and girls of having engaged in sexual relations before marriage, the crime of zina. "Virginity exams were part of her duties, though they were not routine", Dr.Ahmadi explained to Canadian immigration officials.
She conducted manual inspections of female genitalia to determine whether the hymen had "broken". A 'broken' hymen would also have the effect on the Afghan marriage market of marking any woman designated as having committed zina, as unmarriagable. No self-respecting Afghan man would take for a wife any woman or girl who had comported herself so unforgivably disgracefully, insulting Islamic precepts and compromising Afghan culture.
Canadian government officials are now attempting to remove Dr.Ahmadi from Canada as undesirable, accusing her of performing virginity tests at the "request of the state", and testifying on her results, identifying women as zina criminals in courts of law. Aiding prosecutions in Afghanistan geared toward criminalizing women's freedom to use their body as they wished despite the cultural disapproval is not looked upon kindly in Canada, and is, in fact, defined as a human rights assault.
Dr.Ahmadi claims that she was under the impression that the tests she performed were done with the willing consent of the women involved. She would not have undertaken the tests, she claims, had she known they were done under duress. As to say that she, an educated Afghan woman, a medical doctor, had no idea of the repercussions that accrue to any women or girl with the audacity to defy convention where a woman's sexuality is the business of the state, and where men can rape with impunity but require their wives to be virgins.
Dr.Ahmadi came to Canada to claim refugee status after having examined a woman named Soraya in August of 2016 who had been accused of zina. After the examination Dr.Ahmadi signed a report attesting to her opinion that Soraya was definitely not virginal. And then she went on to testify in court of the woman's lapse in Afghan morality. All of which was most useful to the prosecution which led to Soraya's being sentenced to seven years in jail.
When threatening calls arrived from Soraya's family, Dr.Ahmadi felt it was time for her to find a new residence, and Canada was her choice. The Immigration and Refugee Board ruled although the tests were "part of the systematic oppression of women in Afghanistan", they were not a crime against humanity and its Appeal Division ruled that Dr.Ahmadi made no significant contribution to "the systems in Afghanistan which oppress women".
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| Women wait for a polling station to open in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Nooroozi) |
Labels: Afghanistan, Canada, Culture, Female Subjugation, Immigration, Refugee Status
posted by Pieface @ Friday, March 13, 2020
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