'', The New York Times, 15 April 2009

EXCERPT: "About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape. It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning. With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law's repeal. The law, approved by both houses of Parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, applies to the Shiite minority only, essentially giving clerics authority over intimate matters between women and men. Women here and governments and rights groups abroad have protested three parts of the law especially."

To continue reading the article, click .

See also:
'Afghanistan: Mob pelts women protesters with stones', Adnkronos International, 15 April 2009
'Afghanistan: New law threatens women's freedom', Human Rights Watch, 14 April 2009
'The status of women in Karzai's Afghanistan', Centre for Research on Globalization, 14 April 2009
'', The New York Times, 14 April 2009
'', The Huffington Post, 13 April 2009

Related posts:
'Afghan rape-law review to take months', 7 April 2009
'Afghan women struggle to be heard', 10 February 2009
'First Afghan woman mayor says women's rights worsened', 14 January 2009
'Living female in Afghanistan', 17 July 2008
'Many women are unaware of their rights', 15 May 2008