Herat (Afghanistan), Nov 07: A woman poet well-known
in literary circles in Afghanistan's western city of Herat has
died after being severely beaten by her husband, who has been
arrested, police said today.
Nadia Anjuman, 25, died late Friday, said provincial
police chief Nisar Ahmad Paikar.
"We have arrested her husband, accused of killing her,"
Paikar said. The couple had a six-month-old daughter.
Her husband confessed to the beating but denied that
he had killed Anjuman, he said.
"She was especially famous among the female poets in
Herat," said a lecturer at Herat University, Ahmad Sayeed
Haqiqi.
The Editor of the Itfaq-e-Islam daily newspaper, Naqib
Arween, said Anjuman had this year published a collection of
her poems calls Gul-e-Dodi, which means dark red flower.
The United Nations condemned the killing. "The death
of Nadia Anjuman, as reported, is indeed tragic and a great
loss to Afghanistan," UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said at a
media briefing.
"It needs to be investigated and anyone found responsible
needs to be dealt with in a proper court of law," Edwards
said.
Under the fundamentalist Taliban regime of 1996-2001
women were denied the right to education and could not even
leave their homes without a male member of the family.
Women have been given more freedom since the Taliban were
toppled in a US-led campaign in late 2001. But rights groups
say they are still mistreated by men, including through sexual
and domestic violence.
Bureau Report
