news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060718/ap_on_re_as/afghan_virtues_ministry
AP Afghanistan to re-form virtues ministry By AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 18, 5:58 PM ET KABUL, Afghanistan - The Afghan government announced plans Tuesday to re-establish a Vice and Virtues Ministry, but it assured the public the office would not resemble the Taliban version that became a symbol of the brutal regime toppled by US forces in 2001.
Afghanistan 's powerful religious and tribal leaders have been pressing US-backed President Hamid Karzai to reinstate the ministry, which many considered the most powerful in the ousted Taliban government. It employed 32,000 people to enforce the Islamic zealots' bans on girls' schools, on television, on card-playing and other gambling, even on kite-flying and women's public baths. New York-based Human Rights Watch said the move "raises serious concerns about potential abuse of the rights of women and vulnerable groups." Karim Rahimi, Karzai's spokesman, said Afghans should not be worried. "The people were scared of the Vice and Virtues Ministry under the Taliban, but this new ministry won't be like the Taliban's," Rahimi said. "It will take into consideration moral and religious activities to help improve Afghan society." Rahimi said Karzai has discussed plans to revive the department with religious and tribal leaders, and has passed it to the Ministry for Hajj and Religious Affairs for further review and eventual ratification. Human Rights Watch said the new office would concentrate on alcohol, drugs, crime and corruption but it noted that criminal laws in deeply conservative Afghanistan already deal with such matters. "Afghan women and girls face increasing insecurity, and it's more important for the government to address how to improve their access to public life rather than limit it further," said Zama Coursen-Neff, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch. "Reinstatement of this controversial department risks moving the discussion away from the vital security and human rights problems now engulfing the country." Under the Taliban, the ministry's enforcers would harass women whose head-to-toe burqa veils were not sufficiently all-covering, and men whose beards were not sufficiently long, and at times carted off offenders to their own ministry jails. They prevented women from working, begging or home-schooling girls and enforced measures through public beatings and imprisonment. Misdemeanors deemed fit for punishment of women included wearing socks that were not sufficiently opaque, showing wrists, hands, or ankles, and not being accompanied by a close male relative. The Taliban's Virtue and Vice squads beat men for trimming their beards or humiliated people found with video recorders by parading them around their neighborhoods with faces blackened with charcoal or oil and with cassette tape wrapped around their head and neck. Karzai's government tried to resurrect a downgraded version of the ministry as a department in 2002 but it was short-lived.
Alcoholic drinks are set alight in a Kabul park in front of the bomb-ravaged Dar Laman Palace, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, July 17, 2006. Afghan authorities destroyed 630 bottles of wine and 3,300 cans of beer Monday in a public anti-alcohol campaign in the capital, Kabul, officials said.
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