Under Taliban rule, LGBTQ+ Afghans say sexual violence and rape is routine
NOTE: This report contains language and details that may be disturbing to some readers.
In a dimly lit house on the outskirts of Kabul, a 24-year-old transgender woman who asked to be identified as Remo was held for 28 days. During that time, she says she was tortured and repeatedly raped by Taliban fighters. She only secured her release after promising to continue having sex with the commander who ordered her detention.
“I told him, ‘You don’t have to keep me here. I will come whenever you ask,’” Remo tells Zan Times in a phone interview. “The moment he let me go, I fled.”
Her story is one of more than a dozen firsthand accounts collected by Zan Times during a 10-month investigation that started in 2024 into the Taliban’s treatment of LGBTQ+ individuals. The findings reveal a disturbing and widespread pattern of sexual violence, including gang rape, being used against LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan. Our findings echo the recent report of Richard Bennett, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, which was released on June 11.
“Transgender women are especially at risk of violence, including rape and sexual violence, during arrest and detention,” the UN report states, adding “Reporting such abuse is unthinkable, as doing so would expose the survivor – and potentially their families – to further violence, victimization, and societal ostracism.”
Raped in an ‘interrogation room’
In December 2021, Taliban soldiers burst into the Kabul apartment of Ariana and her partner. They were naked in their bedroom when the Taliban soldiers began hitting them with rifle butts and fists. “They screamed that we were sodomizers and deserved to be killed,” recounts Ariana, 25, a transwoman.
The two were blindfolded and taken to Police District 8. A week later, they were transferred to Pol-e-Charkhi prison, where Ariana says she was repeatedly raped.
“Every few nights, they would take me to the interrogation room. There, they would rape me. Sometimes, between three to four men,” she says. “They filmed it and sent it to their friends and invited them to join.”
This pattern of abuse mirrors the testimony of Jannat Gul, a transgender woman detained for eight months by the Taliban in Herat province, located in western Afghanistan. According to a joint report released in April by Rainbow Afghanistan, ILGA World, and ILGA Asia, she was beaten, subjected to electric shocks, and gang raped multiple times per week.
“They forcibly raped me. I remember that one night, four of them took turns raping me,” Gul is quoted in the report.
Taliban officials have used both formal and informal detention facilities — including private homes — to subject LGBTQ+ individuals to rape, torture, and degradation, according to that the report. In particular, trans women are treated as what the report calls “sexual slaves,” and several have disappeared after refusing sexual demands.
Sarwan, a 27-year-old trans woman, tells Zan Times how the Taliban took her to Police District 5 after a raid on her house. “There was no camera in the room. There was a washroom and another room that they would take me there for rape, but they would say it is for interrogation,” Sarwan explains. After two nights of detention, her family was able to free her with the help of local elders.
Sarwan, Ariana, and some of the other survivors who were interviewed by Zan Times say that they were pressured to disclose the names and addresses of their LGBTQ friends in exchange for their freedom.
‘My brothers decided to kill me’
The Taliban aren’t the only perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ+ violence in Afghanistan. “LGBTQ+ persons also face discrimination and violence within their families and communities,” Bennett’s report says.
Darya, a transgender individual in Kabul, was arrested for wearing pants in June 2024. “A Taliban soldier grabbed my phone and when I resisted, he broke my phone,” she says. They beat her severely and took her to Police District 2, where they threw her in a dark room with no washroom or running water. “They didn’t give me food for the first two days and I had to live and pee in the same room.” She was kept there for two weeks. “One night after 12 a.m., three people entered my room and started raping me in turn,” 20 year-old Darya tells Zan Times in a phone interview.
When her mother learned about her arrest, she convinced community elders to plead with the Taliban for her release. Her ordeal wasn’t over. “After my release, my brothers chained me in the shed outside and nearly beat me to death. They said that I had brought shame to the family and destroyed my fathers’s good name. My brothers decided to kill me,” she says. She survived because her mother helped her flee.
What makes the situation for LGBTQ+ Afghans like Darya even more difficult is that, in addition to not having their rights recognized, the Taliban have eliminated all safe refuges or support systems. Even worse, they are being hunted down in public.
Since retaking power, the Taliban have passed laws that criminalise same-sex relationships and empower officials to act with impunity. In August 2024, the regime approved a law that included an article that refers to LGBTQ+ identities as “specific immoral acts” — “sahaq” for women and “lawatat” for men — punishable by execution, stoning, or collapse of a wall onto the victim.
“Same-sex relations are criminalized, and subject to severe physical punishments including public flogging,” UN special rapporteur Richard Bennett’s report states.
According to a CNN report citing data from Afghan Witness, 43 public floggings were documented between November 2022 and November 2024 in which “sodomy” was listed among the charges. These events involved 360 individuals — 192 men, 40 women, and 128 whose sex or gender was not identified.
‘Fighting to survive’
Violence against LGBTQ+ doesn’t take any specific form. Tahera, a trans woman from Herat, says she was fired from a job because she looks different and has “feminine behaviour.” That job loss was devastating for the breadwinner of a family of five. “My family willfully ignore that I am trans; they want me to work like a boy,” she tells Zan Times.
These days, the only jobs she can find involve sex work. She finds her customers on Facebook. Security is always an issue. A few weeks ago, she agreed to meet a man who messaged her on Facebook only to discover that her client was a member of the Taliban. “I was scared when I saw him, but he said, ‘Don’t worry, I look like a Taliban, but I am not a Taliban,’” 25-year-old Tahera says in a WhatsApp voice message to Zan Times. Later, inside his home, he showed his pictures sitting at the intelligence office. “He said, ‘I will not pay you, but you have to come to me whenever I ask you to,’” says Tahera.
Experts, including the UN special rapporteur, say these abuses could constitute crimes against humanity. Citing testimonies and patterns of abuse, the Rainbow Afghanistan report calls the Taliban’s conduct “systematic, institutionalized, and deliberately targeted.”
“While others in Afghanistan are fighting for their rights,” Tahera says “We are simply fighting to survive.”
Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writers.
