For Zarmina Paryani, who was imprisoned twice by the Taliban, the People’s Tribunal for Women of Afghanistan was more than a legal process.
It was an act of freedom, she tells Zan Times. The tribunal was held from October 8 to 10 in Madrid. Its judges found that evidence and testimony presented during the hearings demonstrated “a coordinated, state-level campaign of gender persecution carried out with the intent to erase women from public life.” They pledged to release a full verdict within two months.
For survivors like Zarmina Paryani, that acknowledgement was a recognition long sought by women and other oppressed groups in Afghanistan and one that has been long denied by the Taliban. “It was good enough for me,” she says in a WhatsApp voice message. “The Taliban fear us speaking about their crimes. But that day in the court, I spoke before international judges. That was good enough for me.”
During the hearings held in the hushed hall of the Ilustre Colegio de la Abogacía de Madrid, dozens listened, including judges, lawyers, activists, and exiled Afghans. Some wiped away tears as Zarmina Paryani, now 26, recalled the night Taliban forces stormed the apartment she shared with her sisters, a space where young women used to gather to plan their protests for women’s rights. Their last protest took place on January 16, 2022, three days before their arrest.
“When they started knocking, we knew it was the Taliban,” Zarmina told the tribunal. “Then they started kicking and screaming. Every kick on the door felt like a kick on our body, on our soul.”
The sisters turned off the lights and hid in a bedroom, but the Taliban began breaking the apartment door. When Zarmina saw an armed soldier in their living room, looking at her, she thought death was the only escape: “The only way I could find was to jump from our three-story apartment window.”
She injured her hips but survived the fall. “A Taliban soldier pointed his gun at me and shouted, ‘Don’t move or I’ll shoot!’ That night, even death didn’t give me sanctuary,” she said during her testimony.
Before their arrest, her sister Tamana Paryani, a women’s rights activist, had recorded a short video plea for help and then sent it to a friend who posted it online after they were taken away by the Taliban. The video went viral and Zarmina believes it saved their lives: “That video became the weapon that stopped the Taliban from killing us.”
Zarmina Paryani was one of more than two dozen Afghan women who testified before the tribunal — some in person, others online or through recorded statements. They spoke from across Afghanistan and in exile, from Kabul, Herat, Mazar, Kandahar, and refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.
Some, including Zarmina Paryani and activist Hoda Khamosh, spoke under their real names with their faces uncovered for all to see as the proceedings were broadcast live. Others wore black masks, sunglasses and scarves to conceal their identities in fear of Taliban retaliation. Some even asked that cameras be turned away during their testimony.
They told stories of torture, imprisonment, forced marriage, and humiliation; of bans on work and education; and of living under Taliban rules and decrees that deny their basic human rights.
One of those who testified had been a journalist who worked in Afghan media for two decades. She described how, after the Taliban’s return, women were first dismissed from newsrooms under the pretext of “budget cuts,” then slowly erased from the media landscape.
When she and other journalists tried to hold a press conference to highlight their situation, Taliban forces raided the venue before it began. “They cursed us, saying we made them look like demons to the world. They locked us in a room and threatened us with prison if we spoke again,” she told the tribunal.
That night, she did not return to her home. The Taliban forces had raided her house and beat her husband and son while searching for her. “Today I speak with a mask on, yet I am still afraid,” she said. “Women are not allowed to speak. They tell us, ‘Don’t raise your voice, it’s forbidden; cover your face.’ Girls are taken by force and disappeared, while people remain silent out of fear. Please, carry our voices to anyone who has the power to hear us.”
Another young woman, who testified from Afghanistan via a recorded audio file, spoke of the total erasure of Afghan women. “We have no political rights, no right to vote or be represented in parliament. We can’t even be present in government offices or protest peacefully,” she said. “They have not only taken education from us, they have taken life itself. But I am grateful you are listening. Even if it changes nothing, the fact that you take the time to listen means so much to me and other girls.”
As the hearings concluded, Afghan lawyer Ghizaal Haress read the closing remarks of the preliminary statement on October 10, assuring Afghan women that they “have been heard.” The panel announced it would consider assessing the Taliban’s conduct as crimes against humanity of gender persecution.
The tribunal was convened at the request of four Afghan civil society organizations — Rawadari, the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organization (AHRDO), the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS), and Human Rights Defenders Plus — with the aim to “bear witness, seek accountability, and challenge tyranny and its normalization.”
The Taliban were formally invited, with notifications sent to their Human Rights Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the names of individual leaders accused. They were offered a chance to present a defense but they never responded.
For Zarmina, speaking out is not easy. “The memories of prison are like a wound that has never healed, every time you try to push it away, it opens again,” she tells Zan Times. “But this pain must be spoken, because so many women like us have endured the same horrors — prison, torture, forced marriage, humiliation.”
“In our society, you’re expected to stay silent,” she says. “But now that we are out of Afghanistan, all we want is to tell our painful stories — so that one day, no woman will have to live what we lived through.”
Zahra Nader is the editor-in-chief of Zan Times.
