Feminists clad in burkhas protest against Ireland vs Afghanistan cricket match over Taliban's mistreatment of women

The protestors were voicing their opposition to the Ireland vs Afghanistan match being held this week at Stormont because of the latter state’s quashing of women’s rights.

Their protest was aimed chiefly at the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, and Cricket Ireland – the organisation which represents the island of Ireland at the ICC.

A spokesman for Cricket Ireland referred the News Letter to earlier comments from its leadership that they felt “a moral discomfort” about women’s rights in Afghanistan.

But they went on to add “we don’t believe that punishing athletes will impact upon their government’s policies – and in fact we hope to use the opportunity to shine a light on the issues”.

The burkha (or burqa) is a form of Islamic dress that covers women from head to toe, and was re-imposed by the Taliban after its 2021 takeover of the country.

Today’s protest involved about 10 women, and was held at the gates of Stormont Cricket Ground on the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast.

Dressed in the black garb, the women held signs denouncing “gender apartheid” in Afghanistan and stating that ICC stands for International Cricket Caliphate.

They were drawn from two groups: the LGB Alliance and Fantastic Lesbians (the Taliban has also cracked down on homosexuality).

A spokeswoman for the protestors, Marianne Buchanan Stewart, told the News Letter that they had been getting honks of support from passers-by (as well as some “racist grief” from a man in a white van who assumed they were Muslims).

Among those who were supportive was an Afghan man.

She said: "We cannot stand by and watch a sporting event that treats the total erasure of women from public life as business as usual.

"By hosting this series, Cricket Ireland is normalising a regime that has systematically dismantled the fundamental human rights of millions of Afghan women and girls, including their basic right to play sport.

"We are here today to ensure that the voices of those silenced in Kabul are heard clearly on the boundaries of Stormont.

"True sportsmanship cannot exist where half of a nation’s population is banned from the pitch."

One of the main complaints from protestors is that the ICC’s guidelines state that its national members must facilitate women’s cricket as well as men’s.

The Afghan women’s cricket team was essentially disbanded after 2021, and many of its players now live in exile in Australia.

Joanne Scannell from the LGB Alliance stated that despite this “global and local cricket executives continue to turn a blind eye to clear violations for the sake of fixture fulfillment”.

She said: “This protest is a direct message to Cricket Ireland and the ICC: compliance with international human rights standards is not optional.

"You cannot celebrate equality and inclusion in domestic sport while simultaneously validating a system that enforces gender apartheid on the world stage."

Further matches are to take place this Wednesday and Saturday.

Back in March, RTE had quoted the CEO of Cricket Ireland, Sarah Keane, as saying “I want to acknowledge the discomfort we feel around that decision and our abhorrence around the treatment of women by the regime in particular – but we also see it as an opportunity to reference the [Afghan] women’s team”.

"We didn’t just invite the men’s team to come here, we also invited the women’s team, and we are in discussions around how that might happen.

"In think scheduling may be a problem around this year, but it’s really important that they don’t fall off the agenda and we need the plight of the women’s team to be on that agenda.

"The challenge for us is how we support them and how do we support our values in relation to that."