Steny Hoyer: “I rise to speak about an item that ought to outrage not only everybody on this floor but everybody throughout the world.…”

“I rise to speak about an item that ought to outrage not only everybody on this floor but everybody throughout the world. The plight of Afghani women is desperate. So desperate, in fact, that at least half of the passengers on a recently hijacked Afghani airliner have now sought political asylum in England. So desperate that English authorities continue to investigate whether some of the passengers, men and women, aided their captors in an effort to escape the brutal, vicious, thug-like Taliban regime in Kabul. Mr. Speaker, as we enter a new century marked by hope and optimism, marked by the expansion of freedom and democracy, the Taliban regime seems bent on dragging its citizens, and in particular its women, back to the dark ages. In fact, it is probably worse than the dark ages. To be female in Afghanistan today is to be a target, a target for repression, a target for brutality, a target for physical and emotional terror that knows no peer. As First Lady Hillary Clinton has stated, "We must all make it unmistakably clear this terrible suffering inflicted on the women and girls in Afghanistan is not cultural, it's criminal. And we must do everything in our power to stop it." The First Lady was absolutely correct. Ever since the Taliban seized power in 1996, it has enforced edicts that have destroyed basic human rights for Afghani women.”