The Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) will today honor Sima Samar, chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, with its 2008 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award for her dedication to improving the status of women in Afghanistan. As well as the award, Samar will receive a US$100,000 grant.
Living in countries where women have long been denied education and health care, it is through perseverance that Sima Samar stays the course to assist people in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now in war-torn Sudan.
“It’s really difficult, but I didn’t give up. I stand by my principles and beliefs because I think that nobody would give you rights as a gift, you have to earn it,” said Samar, internationally recognized for her devotion to human rights, especially on behalf of Afghan women.
PHOTO: WANG MIN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
Born in 1957, Samar is the first woman from the Hazara minority — a persecuted ethnic minority in Afghanistan — to obtain a medical degree. She graduated from Kabul University in 1982, when the country was under Russian control following the 1979 invasion.
After graduation, she practiced medicine at a government hospital in Kabul and provided treatment to patients in remote areas of central Afghanistan.
She defied her father’s demand that she return home and accept another arranged marriage after her first husband disappeared in 1984 following his arrest by the communist regime. She instead fled to Pakistan to work with Afghan refugees facing a dire lack of medical and education resources, particularly women forbidden to see male doctors or attend school.
The Afghan physician said she decided early on to fight for women’s rights and equality as she experienced discrimination as a woman in her family and also in school when she was young, prompting her to “study hard to go to college” and become “more or less tough on my work.”
“And honestly, the pressure on me, it is hard to resist. At one time it was really hard. They really wanted to kill … and it was very difficult time, but I did resist. Because I thought, if I give up, then they will repress others very soon, quickly,” she said.
She returned to Afghanistan in December 2001 to become the deputy prime minister and minister of women’s affairs for the interim administration after the removal of the Taliban regime, being one of only two women Cabinet ministers in the transition government.
Samar was appointed to the most senior position ever held by a woman in Afghanistan, but her political career was cut short in June 2002 when she was accused of questioning Islam, especially Shariah Law, following an interview in Canada with a Persian-language newspaper. Samar said she was misquoted.
“What I said was I don’t believe in the Taliban style of Shariah, which is the misinterpretation of free Islam. [The newspaper] misquoted me that I don’t believe in Shariah Law … But, that [the interview] was just a reason. It was all because that I kept calling for justice and they didn’t like it,” she said.
Then-interim leader Hamid Karzai, who was elected president in 2004, told Samar she must move to either lead the foreign affairs ministry or the human rights commission after a group of people at an assembly, or Loya Jirga, shouted “we don’t want her. She is not Muslim.”
Samar accepted the position of chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in July 2002. There, Samar continued to oversee human rights education programs across the country, implement a nationwide program on women’s rights, monitor and investigate human rights abuses and advocate for transitional justice.
As she pursued human rights for all, Samar put her and her family members’ lives at immense risk, facing continuous death threats until now, but she remains undeterred.
“It’s not an easy life. But as I said, that as a human being, you would die one day anyway. So if you die for something positive, it’s much better,” Samar said.
Samar said that she just “ignored” the threats from different groups of fundamentalists most of the time but she did try to be more cautious about her safety “because I really want to continue my work on educating people, and especially the girls.”
“If girls are educated, they will understand what’s their rights, and they will fight for their rights. Without half of the population not being educated, we can not move the society forward,” she said.
Under Samar’s leadership, the Shuhada Organization, founded in 1989, now operates twelve clinics and four hospitals in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as 71 schools in Afghanistan and three schools for Afghan refugees in Quetta, Pakistan, educating over 48,000 girls and boys.
Believing that education is “the main tool to change the mentalities and the whole behaviors within the society,” Samar said that if people were educated, the war in Afghanistan would not have lasted so long, Islam would not have been misused and there wouldn’t be suicide attacks.
“Educated people will not accept what the political leaders preach and used by them under the name of Islam and jihad,” she said. “The problem in Afghanistan is lack of education.”
Samar said the situation in Afghanistan has improved since 2001 as the new Constitution includes an equal-rights provision for women and girls now comprise 30 percent to 35 percent of the total number of students enrolled in school, which was not the case during the Taliban.
However, there is still a long road ahead, she said.
“For the women to be able to exert their rights, the Constitution should become reality, not in the paper. There aren’t enough school facilities, books and trained teachers. A lot of women still do not have access to health care. And the security situation is getting worse,” Samar said.
“Some of the districts are still under the control of Taliban where children, especially girls, can not go to school, health service is not in very good shape, and most of the non-governmental organizations [NGOs] can not go to the areas because of the kidnapping problem. There is lack of law enforcement. On top of these, suicide attacks stop people on the roads and intimidate the people,” she said.
In 2005, Samar was appointed as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights for Sudan, extending her efforts for human rights to another country facing a difficult situation.
Citing what happened in Afghanistan when the Russians left in 1992 as an example, Samar said that neither isolation nor sanction could help a country.
“At that time when the pro-Russian government continued to be in power until 1992 and when the mujahedeen government was formed in Pakistan and Central Afghanistan, the whole international community left Afghanistan, including the NGOs. Afghanistan became isolated, a training ground for terrorists and a place of opium production,” she said.
“Supporting human rights is the responsibility of every person,” Samar said.
Asked about President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) recent remarks that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is not welcome to visit Taiwan at this time, Samar said she was not able to comment on that because she was traveling and didn’t know the details.
“I would have commented on that if I knew the whole background of the story,” she said, but she restated her belief that it’s everybody’s responsibility to promote human rights.
Samar, who has received numerous awards for advocating human rights, suggested that young people not familiar with countries like Afghanistan and Sudan get to know them through reading, traveling or volunteering for NGOs in the countries.
“Young people in Taiwan or in Afghanistan or in any other parts of the world are the owners of this world, the futures of this world. They have to be more respect for human rights and human dignity so they will be more responsible for a peaceful future for this planet,” she said.
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