I encourage anyone who cares about this to travel to Afghanistan themselves and see it with their own eyes before relying on what publications like the Guardian have to say about it. One thing about the article that is probably not true is the claim that the girls were labeled “infidels” by the state. Why this claim is suspicious is that there is no word for “infidel” in the languages spoken in Afghanistan. The closest equivalent would be کافر (kafir), which can refer to someone who isn’t Muslim, but not wearing hijab is not considered to be any kind of proof that someone is not a Muslim. It’s highly doubtful that they were excommunicated for this.

The guardian claims that the government in Afghanistan mandates that women must be covered “from head to toe, revealing only their eyes”, which is clearly not true. When I was in Kabul I saw many women without their faces covered. This is one clear case where the Guardian gets facts on the ground wrong. A lot of women there are wearing surgical masks as a form of face covering that also doubles as protection from pollution and disease. As the girl quoted in the article said, they are doing this as a “precaution”, in other words, the government doesn’t in fact require face covering, but they are doing it anyway because they think they have to.

The article implies that girls were specifically targeted for going to English class, as if they have an issue with learning English. Government officials themselves also go to English classes, so that in and of itself was not a relevant matter to the story.

As for them getting beaten for “confronting the men”, of course you are going to get beaten if you resist arrest or argue. That’s true in most countries, but particularly in Afghanistan the authorities tend to hit people if they are not compliant.

The other issue is that the rule in Afghanistan is not well developed or consolidated, which means that these men who committed these acts like the beatings and arrests were acting outside the law, and the central government doesn’t necessarily support this action. Because of the rudimentary form of government different local elements of the Taliban can act differently or independently, so what the spokesperson quoted in the article said about this being unusual was probably telling the truth. This was only one incident, and hopefully it won’t be repeated elsewhere.

OK so I have lived in the former USSR for a while. The USSR is not really understood by people who haven’t lived in it. The truth is in between; yes it’s not like how people in the USA had been led to believe. Not entirely. We were told most of the bad things and hardly any of the good things. However, most of what was bad about the USSR is true, but people just have a hard time understanding that it was a real place and some things about it were nice, especially if you are into that sort of thing.

That being said, the idealization and white washing of the USSR online is just absurd. All of this revisionism and fantasy by kids online thinking the USSR was wonderful and amazing, is far from reality.

It’s the same story the PRC. Lemmy is just full of whitewashing, propaganda, irrational idealizations, and so on. This post is really a case in point. “Oh Uyghurs are just going to art school and dancing. They love it!” Like I don’t even know how you can write this and not realize that you don’t live in reality. I don’t think you’re lying in purpose, but I can tell you are gullible and naive.

Chinese and Soviet propagandists have an answer for everything. If you take their word for it they’ll have you believe it is all rainbows and unicorns. The problem is, it just isn’t how they say it is. Too much spin, too many lies, and lots of people desperately wishing it was all true.