POC

Words by Isabelle Zhu-Maguire Art by Hella   Introduction Reading the news is exhausting and scary. There is never a day  you are not bombarded with information about terrible happenings in the world.    Scarier still, is all the news stories you hear that go in one ear and out the other. The information  you read and then forget. Just because youforget about a news story, does not mean it stops happening, people will still suffer.    I organised this essay mini-series for the millions of us who have forgotten.    You are about to read the opinions of women

Words by Mavi Art by Hella   Following the Taliban takeover in 2021, the Taliban promised that women would be afforded their rights, whether in work, education, or society. Now the Taliban ask women to stay at home and wear head-to-toe burqas, the rules which the Taliban applied between 1996 and 2001. The list of Taliban infringements on the rights of women and young ladies is long and developing. The Taliban designated an all-male cabinet. They removed the Service of Women’s Issues and supplanted it with the Service of Bad habit and Ideals, which issued the foremost later arrangement. They

Words by Arezo Art by Hella   When we talk about educational and economic aspects of afghan women, the first think that comes in our minds are closed schools, educational boundaries, financial dependency and so on. But do they deserve all of these and how was this trend before shifting the regime? This series will focus on education and economic outlook of Afghan women before and after the Taliban takeover. First and foremost, Afghan girls had grown in education aspect rapidly, and they had accessed to the most competitive universities and competitions. For instance, all- girls afghan robotic team, known

Words by Hadia Art by Hadia's Sister   “Art is sin, a waste of time, God will punish you for drawing and creating artwork”   I was holding my head low in front of a group of teachers in the Islamic Sharia Law faculty. They always invited students from the Fine Arts faculty to guide them to their so-called “Path of righteousness”.    They told me this to stop me from drawing women without their scarves on the street and on the internet, to teach me modesty and how to be a submissive typical Afghan woman.    I had no

Words by Nadia Art by Hella   “Only women can help save Afghanistan, women have made history, be one of them, Do not cower, you have the fighter’s blood in your veins, know that I may not be by your side all the time, make the future you proud of you, raise your voice when your rights are violated and roar like a lioness” I was sitting beside my beloved father, who was spending his last days suffering from cancer before the Taliban’s invasion. His words still give me the strength to fight against the injustice imposed on men and

Words by Shaiysta and Nilofar Art by Aziza   It has been almost 10 months and Afghan girls are still struggling to go to school. These young women have a desire to be educated and become  experts in their fields. In Afghanistan, girls’ education has always been affected due to insecurity, lack of options, and poverty. Cultural norms in particular have affected their right to an education (Bamik 2018). Following the U.S. and NATO troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban took over Afghanistan and reinstated their initial government strategy. This included  restricting high school education for

Words by Tan Arsa Sagara Art by Postmodern Puke   TUTORIAL ON BEING GAY IN INDONESIA VIRAL GAY COUPLE (SENSITIVE CONTENT) 87,000 comments make a video on former gay people to give a lesson on how to cure the mindset or orientation   i would like to suggest straightness is the true disease the symptoms include speaking too loud    i would like to suggest fighting hate crime with hate crime—punching back murder    (they’d sensationalise that too i bet)   i identify as tired first, Indonesian second you say my blood is red without knowing it’s blue you ripped

Words by Vanessa Liao Art by Ajani De Vas Gunasekara   little children   caressed in the arms of not their own    kind but the kind that glistens, pale   pearly white in the summer  sun   little children    raised in fields of letters and numbers playing games of ‘memory’ with the alphabets they tell you will create this word (correctly) or that word (incorrectly)   little children   and their lunchtime  lunch  boxes packed to the brim an aquarium of flavours and aromas   captured directly from the streets of a land far, far away from here

Words by Anonymous Art by Kathy Lee   In April, Melbourne-based artist Zhou Xiaoping launched a body of ground-breaking research on the history of Aboriginal-Chinese people in Australia. Held at the Chinese Museum, I was lucky to attend the packed event celebrating two of the world’s oldest cultures.    At one point in the evening, Xiaoping touched on the inspiration for his work. Following his travels near the Kimberley Desert in 1989, he recounted meeting four Aboriginal Australians. Seated around the campfire, all four had distinct Chinese facial features but knew little about their Chinese heritage. One Aboriginal man, named