The UN office in Afghanistan said that the Taliban gunmen detained and interrogated three women working for the UN on Monday.
“There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan UN female staff by the de facto authorities, including an incident today in which three Afghan women working for the United Nations were singled out and temporarily detained for questioning by armed security agents of the de facto authorities,” the statement reads.
The UN statement, without making clear where the incident took place, calls on the Taliban to immediately end “all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff.”
The Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi denied harassing or detaining UN female staff. He writes on his Twitter account that Taliban agents of vice and virtue stopped a group of women in Kandahar province and asked them some questions. After discovering that they are working for the UN, they stopped questioning them, he said. “There is no truth in the information provided by the UNAMA,” tweeted Karimi in Dari.
There are constant reports about the Taliban mistreatment of women across the country. The Taliban has introduced a strict dress code for women while in public. The Taliban require them to wear a burqa or long black dress covering their entire body and cover their face with a mask. The Taliban also demands women to be accompanied by a male chaperone. There are reports that the Taliban regularly harass women on the street, and even arrest some for not abiding by the Taliban imposed dress code or being accompanied by a male chaperone.
