International women launch appeal for Afghan women

By Janet McEvoy

BRUSSELS, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A group of 50 prominent women on Tuesday dedicated International Women's Day on March 8 to the women of Afghanistan and urged that foreign pressure be put on the purist Taliban government to restore their rights.

``Afghanistan is the only country in the world where the law enforces segregation on grounds of gender,'' the European Union's humanitarian aid commissioner, Emma Bonino, told a news conference where the appeal, dubbed ``a flower for the women of Kabul,'' was launched.

``This is not only a gross violation of human rights: this is real gender apartheid,'' she said.

Bonino, who was briefly arrested last October with her delegation during a humanitarian visit to the country, said the international community should not wait any longer to step up pressure for restoration of women's rights.

The appeal, which was signed by the five women on the Brussels-based European Commission, Nobel Prize winners, ministers and intellectuals, urges the international community ``to withhold recognition of any regime in Afghanistan so long as gender discrimination is imposed in the country.''

Bonino said senior United Nations female figures had declined to sign, but she did not elaborate.

The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia group, overthrew the Afghan government in September, 1996, and stripped women of such basic rights as leaving their homes, going to work and going to school.

Wearing a burqa, a restrictive head to toe garment Afghan women have had to wear since the Taliban came to power, an Afghan doctor told the news conference some of the Taliban restrictions on women were against the spirit of Islam.

``I would like to say that it's not our culture, our tradition, our religion. It's the misuse of power,'' the doctor, who refused to be named for security reasons, told the news conference.

``If the girls are not allowed to go to school, it's not Islamic.''

She said women were not entitled to go out without male company. ``Then they have to prove that it's their husband, their brother or their father. They have no access to hospitals if it's a male doctor and they can not wear high-heeled shoes because it makes noise and disturbs the men,'' she said.