By Sana Atef
Zainab* travelled to Pakistan with her father so she could obtain medical treatment. On November 8, they approached the Chaman border crossing of Kandahar province. It’s there that 26-year-old Zainab says she was sexually assaulted by Pakistani border officers while going through their biometric processing.
The biometric process, which registers and identifies people crossing the border, usually takes three to five minutes. It lasted nearly 15 minutes for Zainab, she tells Zan Times. The Pakistani border agent took advantage of the process – which requires people to remain motionless in order for the technology to properly scan fingers and/or faces – to touch her body, including her private parts. “The agent told me to put my fingers onto the machine’s sensor,” she explains. “When I put my fingers on the machine, he said I hadn’t done it correctly.” He fondled her hands before placing them on the biometric scanner. While he was walking away, she says that he rubbed his hands on one of her thighs. That wasn’t the end of his abuse. “When getting biometric data from my eyes, he came near me and told me to hold my head straight for the camera,” she recounts. While she was required to remain still, “he slowly put his hand on my breast and squeezed it several times.”
Her protests were ignored. “When the Pakistani agent touched my body, I immediately pushed his hand back and said, ‘Don’t touch me. I am sick and I have to go to treatment, I have to go. Why are you bothering me?’” He disregarded her distress, saying, “ ‘If you want, I will treat you.”
Zainab is clearly distraught remembering and recounting the traumatic experience. During her interview with Zan Times, Zainab repeatedly mentions that the 15 minutes she spent at the identity verification office on the Pakistani border was the worst experience of her life. She had hoped to quickly leave the office after the biometric process was completed, but the officer had taken her documents. He used the pretext of checking her documents to again get near her, touching her arms, knees and trying to rub against her. “Every time I pulled away, he would say angrily, ‘This is not your tazkira [Afghan identity card]. The photos are different,’ ” Zanaib explained, “I was young when I got the ID card.” He moved nearer and said, “You are still young.”
Even after returning to Afghanistan, she still has nightmares of the official who sexually harassed and assaulted her, saying, “The face of that Pakistani officer still scares me when I remember it. I will never forget his big face, thick black mustache, and bulging belly.”
Zainab’s experience of sexual assault on the Pakistani border is not an isolated case but one experienced by other women required to interact with Pakistani officials who act with impunity, knowing that they can deny entry to any Afghans who complain. Fatima*, a 32-year-old woman from Zabul province, told Zan Times that she was sexually assaulted by the Pakistan Border Police in front of her husband. After remaining childless after six years of marriage, she and her husband decided to go to Pakistan for treatment. Like Zainab and her father, they crossed at the Chaman border crossing. And it’s there that Fatima was sexually assaulted during the body search on November 10.
Their nightmare began after they’d passed all the administrative procedures. “When we were crossing the border, the police called. ‘Stop.’ They told us, ‘You have not been body searched,’” Fatima tells Zan Times. When her husband said that women should be body searched by police women, the male Pakistani officer said, “No. I will do it myself, there is no policewoman.”
Fatima and her husband felt they had no other choice. “He touched my whole body. When I reacted and pulled away, he kept touching, even where I showed sensitivity,” she recounts.
“I was crying because of my powerlessness,” she says. “My husband’s eyes were filled with tears, too. Out of shame, I couldn’t even make eye contact with my husband. After the body search, the Pakistani policeman looked at me and laughed. At that moment, I wished death would engulf me.”
Fatima says that after returning to Afghanistan, the sexual assault and resulting humiliation caused her to become isolated. In particular, she is very upset that she was sexually abused in front of her husband.
Sexual violence is rampant at the Pakistani border. In early November, an Afghan woman disclosed how Pakistani border guards sexually assaulted her during a body search at the Torkham border by posting a video about her experience on social media networks. In response to this incident, Pakistani authorities at the Torkham crossing confirmed that a government agent of this country was suspended for sexually abusing the woman.
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.
