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INTERVIEW WITH ZOYA AZAIDI, RAWA'S REPRESENTATIVE IN MADRID |
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Her eyes are big, her skin olive-coloured and her hair is a black-waves sea. She was born 25 years ago in Kabul. But she was never forced to hide her beautiful face behind a burqa. At 14, Zoya Azadi’s parents sent her to a refugee camp at Pakistan, where she grew up with the women of RAWA, the Association to which she has entirely devoted her life nowadays, travelling across the world to denounce the situation of women in her country, and to try to find financial support. These days, Zoya Azadi is in Spain, thanks to the NGOs Paz Ahora (Peace now), and with special condolences for Julio Fuentes’ family, friends and colleagues. What would you like to say about El Mundo war correspondent, Julio Fuentes? - When I heard about Julio’s murder I was extremely shocked, as some days before his death I was with him in Pakistan where I sporadically work in the refugees’ camps. Both my organisation, RAWA, and I would like to clearly state here the big difference between a group of criminals and the people of Afghanistan. We are deeply ashamed of these people. And we fully sympathize with the pain his family and friends must be suffering right now, as we are used to suffer the same pain every day. When you say "criminals", do you mean only the Taliban? - No. I mean the North Alliance too. There is no difference for us. The Alliance is all hypocrisy. Western people have never seen their faces without the precious democracy-mask they wear now. If you take the mask out, you will see the same face as the Taliban. The North Alliance committed the same crimes when they were at Government. We cannot rely on them any more. The only place where we want to see them is before the International Criminal Court. Are you pessimistic about the future of your country? - It depends. Let’s imagine, for instance, that the former king come back and the UN send peace forces and that all the armed groups at Afghanistan (including the North Alliance) are disarmed, then the situation will not dramatically change but it would involve a first step. But if that disarmament does not take place, we cannot talk about peace. There is a risk of civil war at Afghanistan. We cannot forget when, with the Alliance in power, parents were forced to sell their children because they had nothing more left... not to talk about the buckets packed with pulled-out eyes... So all your hopes are on the Afghan former king Zahir Shah? - RAWA’s ideal, its God, is not the former king but at this moment, provided that no democratic alternative exists, we prefer the king and support him because the people of Afghanistan love him. What’s your opinion about the University of Kabul accepting women again? - It is a clear example of the North Alliance hypocrisy, the same as the fact that women do not have to wear the burqa now... When they were at Government, there were few women without the burqa on the street, for if they happened to see you and mostly if you were a beautiful girl, they hammered on your door with a kalashnikov and raped you. Most of them committed suicide. That is why the problem does not lay in having access to the University or wearing the burqa. The real problem is security. Will this problem be solved when there are women at Government? - First of all, the woman taking part of an Afghan Government must represent all Afghan women’s suffering, and not be a woman who has been living in the West for years. You want to come back to Kabul? - Of course. But in the meantime I will go on teaching Afghan women, telling them that their destiny is not what they have been told them, that they have options, and rights that they can reach.
"EL
MUNDO" [PAZ AHORA'S TRANSLATION: ELENA FERNANDEZ]
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