PM's wife says burqa is a 'symbol of
oppression'
War on terrorism: Human Rights
By Marie
Woolf, Chief Political Correspondent
20 November 2001
Cherie
Booth, the Prime Minister's wife, strode
into the political spotlight on Monday to voice her anger at the denial of
"basic human rights" to women in Afghanistan.
At a press conference in Downing Street,
Ms Booth,
a human rights lawyer, railed against the treatment of women under the Taliban,
and denounced the wearing of the burqa. Wearing nail
varnish was an offence punishable by the removal of a woman's fingernails, she
said, adding: "Nothing more symbolises the
oppression of women than the burqa, which is a very
visible sign of the role of women in Afghanistan."
But her sharply worded comments upset some Islamic leaders, who urged
the West to concentrate on the struggle of everyday life in the shattered
country, rather than the sartorial restrictions on its women. The way of life
of women in Afghanistan
was a complex matter ill-suited to public pronouncements by politicians or
their spouses, they suggested.
Ms Booth
has avoided the public eye since her husband's
landslide election win in 1997, rarely giving public backing
to government measures. But flanked by Clare
Short and Estelle
Morris, the Secretaries of State for
International Development and Education, Ms
Booth said she had been motivated by reading
of the erosion of women's rights and meeting women who had been victims of the
Taliban regime.
Ms Booth,
a QC and Crown Court recorder, said that, in all her years of experience in
human rights, she could not recall "repression or cruelty quite as horrifying
as that the Taliban regime
have imposed on the people of Afghanistan.
"We all know that the Taliban
is a regime that denies all its citizens even the most basic
of human rights, and for women that is particularly
acute," she said. Her condemnation mirrors that of Laura
Bush, who on Saturday became the first wife
of a United States
president to give a solo address to the nation, during which she spoke of the
Taliban's "brutal oppression" of
women.
Responding to the comments, leading British Muslims warned
well-intentioned Westerners to be sensitive about Islamic customs and to avoid
meddling. The Muslim Council of Britain said the issue of the burqa was not a priority in Afghanistan
when the entire infrastructure had been destroyed. Ensuring people were fed
during the winter and had access to medicine were more important issues than
what women were wearing.
The council believes putting female teachers back
into the classroom and ensuring women have medical care would be more important
gestures to the Afghani people than making pronouncements on the burqa. Inayat
Bungla-wala, the
council's spokesman, said: "Initially we should concentrate on more urgent
matters than dress. The fact is that people in Afghanistan
don't have a health service and have one of the highest mortality rates ... The
West should be paying less attention to dress and more to these issues.
"Wearing a burqa is a women's choice
that should be respected, but we agree that there should be no coercion."
Under Islamic law women are required to cover their head with a scarf
or hijab.
But most Islamic scholars say that the full veil or niqab – the most extreme
version of which is the burqa – is not
compulsory, and cannot be imposed by men.
At yesterday's media event at No 10, Afghani women wearing sober suits
explained to Ms Booth
how stifling the burqa was to wear. Two teachers also
told how they were driven out of their jobs when the Taliban
stopped girls attending school and closed 63 girls' schools when they took
power in 1996.
