Love is a strange notion, Hyerada Times, India
October 15, 2007
Hyderabad Times (Hyderabad, India) October 15th 2007
‘Love is a strange notion’
While 54 per cent women justify domestic violence in a nation-wide survey, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy investigates whether women in Afghanistan have been ‘liberated’ since the invasion by America and its allies
PRIYANKA DASGUPTA Times News Network
With 54 per cent Indian women justifying wife-beating, the scale of exploitation against women and the reasons for accepting them don’t seem to have changed much worldwide. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the first non-American journalist to be awarded the prestigious Livingston Award, and the youngest recipient of the One World Media broadcast journalist of the year award, had interviewed Afghan men who wanted their wives veiled since they couldn’t control themselves! The maker of 12 documentaries, on subjects as varied as stalled reconstruction and the repression of women in the post-Taliban regime, women’s movement in Saudi Arabia, abortion in the Philippines and aboriginal Canadians in British Columbia, tells Hyderabad Times that she doesn’t let fear run her life. She has plans to do a documentary on the Partition generation of Indo-Pak and a film on Robert Mugabe.
Does being named among the ‘10 to Watch in 2007’ by Toronto Star add to the pressure to perform?
The accolades are a recognition of my work. They point to the fact that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from. The awards inspire me to reach beyond the ordinary.
Why did you choose this profession?
When 9/11 took place, I was freelancing for newspapers (in the US and Canada) and studying politics. I realised that writing articles about the Muslim world was not enough; my readers in the US could seldom imagine the conditions, environment I was talking about. I turned to documentary film-making as a way to make Americans understand what life is like in the Muslim world. Later, I moved beyond the Muslim world to look at stories in Canada, the Philippines and South Africa.
Is the condition of Afghani widows still as pathetic as has been portrayed in Siddique Barmak’s Osama, where a girl has to be dressed up as a boy by her widowed mother to earn a livelihood?
Afghan women are worse than second-class citizens. The Constitution gives them a few rights — to divorce, to refuse marriage before the age of 16, to work and study. But, Afghan men refuse these rights to women. In 2002, Afghan women were hopeful. By 2007, many are disillusioned by how Afghanistan has fared in the last six years. Afghan women barely have the freedom to walk out of their homes. Finding a partner and falling in love is a strange notion for them. There are a few families who would allow their daughters to have love marriages. Most women who fall in love have to run away to another part of the country.
Hasn’t education changed the mindset of Afghan men?
Education has not changed the Afghan mind towards women. The ability to read and write is one thing, but does that change society?
Your documentary quotes that 9/11 has been very good for Pakistan since it gave a reason to the country to dump the Talibans…
September 11 was a wake-up call for Pakistan — did we want to become like Afghanistan or did we want to walk with our heads high into the 21st century with the rest of the civilised world? I think President Musharraf chose the latter.
Would you have got financial backing and accolades abroad if your documentaries hadn’t highlighted Pakistani extremism?
I’ve worked in over seven countries and have won awards for films I’ve done outside of Pakistan. I know where I stand. Unfortunately, people would like me to be Pakistan’s PR agent; I’m a journalist and I like to highlight the truth which, many find too hard to swallow.
hyderabadtimes@indiatimes.com
Sharmeen on the streets of Lahore
