Three Afghan women detained for protesting Taliban abuses described torture and other severe mistreatment in custody, Human Rights Watch said today.
The women said they were wrongfully detained with their families, including small children. They experienced threats, beatings, dangerous conditions of confinement, denial of due process, abusive conditions of release, and other abuses. The authorities assaulted and administered electric shocks to detained male relatives. 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.
“It’s difficult to overstate the incredible bravery of these and other Afghan women who protest against Taliban abuses,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “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.”
The Taliban had arbitrarily arrested the three women during a single raid on a safe house in Kabul in February 2022. The Taliban authorities held them and their family members for several weeks at the Interior Ministry in apparent retaliation for their involvement in planning and participating in women’s rights protests. After their release, they were able to flee the country.
After the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, they immediately began rolling back the rights of women and girls. Women began to protest on the streets since Taliban’s first week in power, despite the grave risks they faced in doing so. By early September, women-led protests were taking place in Herat province in western Afghanistan and quickly spread across multiple provinces.
The Taliban response was brutal from the beginning, beating protesters, disrupting protests, and detaining and torturing journalists covering the demonstrations. The Taliban also banned unauthorized protests. Over time, the Taliban’s abusive responses escalated, with a particularly brutal response to a protest on January 16 in Kabul, when Taliban members threatened, intimidated, and physically assaulted protesters, using pepper spray and electric shock devices.
Days later, the Taliban began conducting raids to arbitrarily detain women who had participated in protests. The Washington Post documented the Taliban’s arrests of 24 women’s rights activists, some taken with their families, in January and February.
Tamana Paryani, one of the first protesters to be arbitrarily detained under Taliban rule, filmed herself as the Taliban broke into her home at night searching for her, and then quickly posted the video on social media. The women interviewed said that Paryani’s abduction sent waves of fear through other protesters, causing many to go into hiding.
“I didn’t know them well, but I became afraid then,” one woman said, referring to Paryani and another woman arrested that night. “I woke up at night and all my body shook.… We were so afraid. We knew we would be arrested.” Another woman said family and friends repeatedly urged her to flee the country, but she refused: “I wanted to stay and fight.”
The three women described being 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. The Taliban held them for several weeks, and abusively interrogated them, without allowing access to counsel or other due process rights, forcibly coerced confessions, and severely tortured the men.
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.
The Taliban should immediately release everyone detained for exercising their rights to free speech and peaceful protest. They should respect the rights of all to peaceful assembly and free expression, including journalists covering protests. They should end all arbitrary detention, ensure due process, including promptly charging suspects in custody before an independent judge, and providing immediate access to counsel.
The Taliban should hold lawfully detained individuals in accordance with the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Anyone responsible for torture or other ill-treatment should be impartially investigated and appropriately prosecuted.
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. They should increase refugee resettlement places for Afghans and give priority to resettling women’s rights defenders who are at particular risk because of ongoing activism.
The governments should also establish and maintain generous complementary pathways for safe, legal, and orderly migration. The UN and concerned governments should advance efforts to provide accountability for human rights violations in Afghanistan, including attacks on women’s rights protesters, through steps such as establishing a new UN-mandated accountability mechanism to investigate and collect evidence of 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,” Barr said. “Unfortunately, their pleas to the international community to stand by them have not been answered.”
Women Protesters’ Accounts
In the days following the protests in February, the Taliban began arresting protesters. The three women protesters interviewed said they expected to be arrested. Khorshid (all names are pseudonyms), said a male relative saw Taliban members on the street outside their home. “Dinner was ready,” she said, but he said, “We have to go now: they are here to arrest you.” The two, with Khorshid’s young children, left through the back of the house to temporary safety with family members. “On the way, there were a lot of checkpoints,” Khorshid said. “I said I was pregnant and needed a doctor. The Taliban searched my face with a torch at every checkpoint.”
A day later, Khorshid’s family learned that the Taliban had that address. Khorshid said the family members sheltering them ordered them out of the house. The family fled into the cold. Khorshid said she feared most for her children’s safety and pleaded, “Take the children far away from me; just leave me alone.” The family managed to make their way to a location used as a safe house.
The three women said that on a night in February, they heard Taliban members pound loudly on the front door of the apartment building where they and other protesters were hiding with their families. Khorshid said she saw women running up the stairs and Taliban members running after them. She put food in front of her children in hopes that this domestic scene would reduce the Taliban members’ aggressive behavior: “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.” But the entire family was arrested, including the children.
One woman was in the shower when the Taliban came; they threatened to break down the door if she did not come out immediately. Another family did not open their door. The Taliban broke it down.
The Taliban team who raided the safe house included five women. “The women had their faces covered and had guns,” said Hypatia, another of the protesters interviewed. “They demanded: ‘Raise your hands, give us your phone, tell us your name. When I didn’t give her my phone, she called a big Talib … He asked my name then he said, ‘[Hypatia] is one of the protesting women. Six months she is protesting against us. She put us in a bad situation: it is good that we are arresting her.'” Hypatia still refused to hand over her phone and the male Taliban member hit her with a radio. She finally handed over the phone and said that in that moment she was so afraid that she urinated on herself.