Outrage at Taleban's Hindu dress code

Now Hindu and Sikh women will have to wear veils too

The Taleban authorities in Afghanistan have ordered religious minorities to wear tags identifying themselves as non-Muslims, drawing condemnation from the United States and India.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called it "the latest in a long list of outrageous oppressions" by the country's militant Muslim movement.

Forcing social groups to wear distinctive clothing or identifying marks can never, never be justified

Richard Boucher,
US State Department

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raminder Singh Jassal said his government "absolutely deplored such orders which patently discriminate against minorities".

The Taleban's Minister for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, Mohammed Wali, said the movement's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, would approve the new edict soon.

Under the new directive, Hindu women will also have to veil themselves like other Afghan women.

Aim unclear

The BBC's Kabul correspondent Kate Clark says is it still not clear what the purpose of the new identity tags will be. To Western eyes the policy seems perilously similar to the Nazi policy forcing Jews to wear yellow stars.

But the Taleban say the tags are to protect, rather than persecute minorities, to avoid them being punished for breaking Taleban laws which only apply to Muslims, such as growing beards and having to pray at the mosque.

US spokesman Mr Boucher rejected that explanation.

The Taleban destroyed religious statues

"Forcing social groups to wear distinctive clothing or identifying marks stigmatises and isolates those groups and can never, never be justified," he said.

A Hindu in the Afghan capital Kabul said the identification would make Hindus "vulnerable".

"It will degrade our position in society," Anar, who uses only one name, told the Associated Press news agency.

Mr Wali, the virtue minister, said Islam required "religious minorities living in an Islamic state [to] be identified".

Turbans

The Taleban minister said Sikhs would not have to identify themselves because they could already be distinguished by their turbans.

Women, however, both Hindu and Sikh, will have to cover their faces in public like other Afghan women rather than just wear headscarves.

Afghanistan has only a tiny non-Muslim community, including several thousand Hindus and Sikhs and, it is though, only one single Jew. Perhaps 500 Hindus live in Kabul.

It will degrade our position in society

Anar,
Afghan Hindu

Most of the minorities left in the mid-1990s, when their property was looted by Mujahideen factions, but some returned to Afghanistan when the Taleban took power.

The minorities tend to be merchants or shopkeepers.

The Taleban's destruction of ancient Buddhist statues in March raised fears for the safety of these minorities, but the Taleban said they were not going to destroy idols sacred to living communities.

There have been several reports in the past that the Taleban was going to impose special rules on the attire of Sikhs and Hindus.

All turned out to be baseless. This time a Taleban minister has confirmed the ruling.

There is still no word, however, on when the new law might be implemented or what form the identity tags might take.