Cootiephobia
Posted on | April 13, 2009
Kandahar Taliban have claimed responsibility for the assassination of Afghani women’s rights activist Sitara Achakzai over the weekend:
Officials said the attack happened in broad daylight. The Taliban have claimed responsibility. Friends said Mrs Achakzai was returning from a provincial council meeting; her assassins were lying in wait nearby.
“This cold-blooded assassination puts in question the direction that Afghanistan is heading,” warned Wenny Kusuma, the director of the United Nations Development fund for Women in Afghanistan. “There is no respect for the rule of law.”
Earlier this year Mrs Achakzai was instrumental in organizing a nationwide sit-in of more than 11,000 women, in seven provinces. The women ‘prayed for peace’ to mark International Women’s Day.
Her death has sent shockwaves through Afghanistan’s human rights community. It comes after Mrs Achakzai suffered shrapnel wounds to her face in a Taliban suicide attack on Kandahar’s provincial council building that left 13 dead a fortnight ago.
Yesterday was the first time she had returned there since. A friend said she went to say farewell: frightened for her safety she was to leave Afghanistan on May 1.
This fear women, and so they kill them.
