Human Rights Watch has documented how Afghan women have been mistreated and tortured while detained after protesting Taliban abuses. “Afghan women and girls have faced some of the harshest consequences of Taliban rule, and they have led the difficult fight to protect rights in Afghanistan,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.
In a new report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) details what happened to three women who were arbitrarily arrested by the Taliban in Kabul in February. For several weeks, the women and their relations, including small children, were detained at the Interior Ministry, apparently in retaliation for their involvement in women’s rights protests.
The three women protesters interviewed said they expected to be arrested. Khorshid (all names are pseudonyms), and her family fled their home after Taliban members were seen on the street. In February, the Taliban found their safe house. “I told my kids, ‘Don’t be afraid. Be strong. You’re not just a kid: you’re my kids.’ I knew they would arrest us, but I didn’t think they would arrest my kids,” said Khorshid.
The women told HRW that they were “held initially in a single cramped and stiflingly hot room with a total of 21 women and 7 children for five days, provided virtually no food or water or access to a toilet.” They were threatened and harshly interrogated during their custody, which lasted several weeks. Khorshid says a Taliban member put a gun to her head, asking, “Who are you and why are you here?” She responded, “I am a protester.” As she told HRW, “I had no choice. They know me: my phone was in their hand.”
“They searched our Facebook, searched our calls, searched all of that: all of our documents on our laptops,” Hypatia, another of the detained women, told HRW. “They played our messages to us and asked about them. They asked, ‘Where are your other friends?’ They said, ‘You must help us find them.’” In addition, the Taliban “forcibly coerced confessions, and severely tortured the men,” including with electric shocks.
“The Taliban compelled the three women’s families to hand over the original deeds to their property as the price for release, with the threat that the Taliban would confiscate the property if the women got into trouble again,” HRW stated. The women told Human Rights Watch that “other protesters arbitrarily detained with them received the same treatment.”
“The women’s description of their experiences sheds light on the Taliban’s treatment of women protesters in custody and the Taliban’s efforts to silence the protest movement,” explains HRW. After the women and their families were released from custody, they fled Afghanistan. But relatives still in the country continue to suffer. Hypatia told HRW, “One of my relatives with eight kids has disappeared. His wife can’t feed the kids.”
“It’s difficult to overstate the incredible bravery of these and other Afghan women who protest against Taliban abuses,” said Barr. “These women’s stories show how deeply threatened the Taliban feel by their activities, and the brutal lengths the Taliban go to try to silence them.”
It’s one example of how the Taliban are rolling back the rights of women in the country, explained HRW. The Taliban has responded to women-led protests by brutally beating protesters and detaining and torturing journalists. The Taliban’s response has gotten harsher. Now, all unauthorized protests are banned and people who participated in protests are being arbitrarily detained.
Human Rights Watch called for the Taliban to “immediately release everyone detained for exercising their rights to free speech and peaceful protest.” In addition, the organization believes that “governments engaging with the Taliban should press them to comply with Afghanistan’s obligations under international law including to respect freedom of speech and assembly, to ensure due process, and to prevent torture and other ill-treatment.”
