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Afghan women journalists stranded in Iran: No shelter, no escape

In November 2023, Razia was working for an online media outlet in Afghanistan when produced a video about the challenges women face in western Kabul. The Taliban summoned her to the intelligence office in her province along with the person she interviewed. Fearing the Taliban’s behaviour, Razia did not show up. In her absence, the interviewee told the Taliban that Razia had coerced her into making those statements. Next, Taliban officials pressured Razia’s employer to send her to the Taliban’s intelligence office.

Razia decided to quit her job and go into hiding. A few days later, she fled the country and entered Iran via a land route. “When I worked on that report, I asked the office not to show the interviewee’s real name and face, but they refused. That’s why the interviewee was arrested and I had to escape,” she recounts to Zan Times.

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It was about seven months ago that this 28-year-old journalist had left her family behind in Afghanistan to start a new life in Tehran. She quickly realized that living in Tehran was not easy: “I paid rent for one month, but then I ran out of money. My landlord used an excuse to demand my passport and held it hostage. He said he wouldn’t return it until I paid.”

That night, Razia had nowhere to stay. “He evicted me from the house. I ended up on the streets. I spent the night terrified, sitting on a bench in a park. It was a night full of fear and difficulty,” she says. The next day, Razia borrowed money from a friend to retrieve her passport. 

After a lot of searching, Razia found shelter: a rental room already occupied by four female university students.

In its latest report published on November 26, 2024, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) states that 336 cases of human rights violations against journalists and media workers were documented in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2023 alone. In addition, UNAMA notes that there were 256 instances of arbitrary detention of journalists, 130 cases of torture and mistreatment, and 75 incidents of threats or intimidation from August 15, 2021, when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, to September 30, 2024. The report further highlights that the ban on women studying journalism as well as restrictions on their work have forced many experienced female journalists to leave Afghanistan.

Rezma, a 29-year-old journalist from northern Afghanistan, was forced to flee her country in June 2023 due to mounting security threats after six years working in the media. She travelled to Mashhad, Iran, with her mother, two sisters, and a younger brother. Speaking to Zan Times, Rezma explains that her journalism drew the attention of the Taliban two months earlier when she published a report about child marriages in a local media outlet. She was summoned to the Taliban’s Directorate of Information and Culture. “I knew that being summoned by the Directorate of Information and Culture would mean detention and imprisonment. They had told my office that publishing such reports was an insult to the traditions of the Prophet and Islam, and the journalist must answer for it,” she says.

As the sole breadwinner and head of her family, Rezma had to act swiftly. She and her family left for Iran, despite lacking a male guardian for the journey. “We told a male passenger to say he was my mother’s brother if the Taliban searched the vehicle. At first, he refused, but after we explained our desperation and that we needed to escape Afghanistan, he took pity on us and agreed,” explained Rezma. 

Like many others, the journalist left Afghanistan hoping that she could rebuild her life free of fear with the support of journalist advocacy organizations. Her expectations were soon crushed: “In Iran, you soon realize there’s no institution to hear your voice. If you insist too much, they say you should have stayed in Afghanistan and not migrated here.”

In the early days of her time in Iran, Rezma began selling goods illegally in Tehran’s metro system with the help of another girl: “Our work was illegal, and we earned very little. Most of our time was spent running from Iranian police, fearing fines or arrest. For three months, I couldn’t pay my rent.”

After she was three months behind in rent payments, Rezma’s landlord proposed an abhorrent exchange: sexual relations in lieu of rent. “With shamelessness, he said, ‘Become my temporary wife,and you can live here rent-free as long as you want.’” she recounts. “His words hit me like a hammer. I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak. I felt as though his gaze was suffocating me.”

Rezma left the house and sought refuge with a relative in another city in Iran. Now, her relatives have asked them to find their own place. That’s a big problem because, while Rezma works in a garment factory, she is paid significantly less than her coworkers because of her lack of legal documentation.

Another veteran journalist who fled Afghanistan is 25-year-old Somayeh. Three months ago, she was living in a western part of the country, reporting on women’s issues for a media outlet based outside Afghanistan. “I worked in secret, but local Taliban members kept sending messages and calling, asking where I was employed. Once, they raided my house, but I wasn’t there, so they couldn’t arrest me,” she tells Zan Times.

Using an emergency visa to Iran, which can be issued within three days, Somayeh managed to leave Afghanistan with her younger brother but without the rest of her family. Upon arrival in Iran, she found herself with insufficient funds, unable to pay for more than a few nights in a hotel. She began searching for rental housing but found that a challenge: “The hotel charged others 400,000 tomans per night, but for me, it was 1.5 million tomans. We contacted several landlords and even visited places in person, but no one would rent to us.”

After days of uncertainty, Somayeh finally managed to rent a 12-square-metre room but the “room was filthy and reeked of decay. By the end of the first week, my body was covered with painful, pus-filled sores.”

Before leaving Afghanistan, Somayeh had contacted two organizations that support journalists, informing them of her dire situation. They advised her to leave the country as quickly as possible, assuring her that she would receive support once in a different country. However, none of these organizations responded since she arrived in Iran. “They initially assured me they would help, but now they don’t even reply to my emails. I don’t know how to survive in this situation,” she says. 

Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Leila Mandgar is the pseudonym of a female journalist from Afghanistan.

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