From The Times
May 17, 2007
Tonight’s TV
David Chater
Dispatches: Aghanistan Unveiled, Channel 4, 9pm
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy travels to Afghanistan five years after the overthrow of the Taleban, and finds that the treatment of women has changed little. Although men and women are supposed to be equal under the new constitution, women continue to live under the weight of hundreds of years of oppression. Girls are still sold into marriage, women are pressuredinto wearing the burka, and many are kept as virtual prisoners inside the home. In one scene, Obaid-Chinoy visits a hospital where women who have tried to commit suicide by setting fire to themselves are treated for horrific burns. It is a portrait of unrelieved misery in a country of heartstopping beauty.