Oct. 20 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) has denounced this Thursday the torture and ill-treatment that three Afghan women detained for protesting against Taliban abuses would have suffered.
According to the testimony that the women have offered to the organization, they have experienced threats, beatings, dangerous prison conditions, as well as denial of due judicial process.
In addition, the authorities allegedly assaulted and applied electric shocks to the women’s male relatives, events that shed light on the Taliban’s treatment of female protesters in custody and their efforts to silence the protest movement.
“It is hard to overstate the incredible bravery of these and other Afghan women protesting Taliban abuses,” said Heather Barr, deputy women’s rights director at HRW.
“These women’s stories show how deeply threatened the Taliban feel by their activities, and how far they will go to try to silence them,” he added.
The Taliban, according to the NGO, arbitrarily arrested the three women during a single raid on a safe house in Kabul in February 2022. Authorities held them and their relatives for several weeks at the Ministry of the Interior in apparent retaliation for their involvement in planning and participating in protests for women’s rights. After their release, they were able to flee the country.
Tamana Paryani, one of the first protesters to be arbitrarily detained under Taliban rule, recorded herself as the Taliban stormed her home at night looking for her, then quickly posted the video on social media.
“I didn’t know them well, but then it scared me,” Paryani said. “I woke up at night and my whole body was shaking. We were very scared. We knew they would arrest us,” she detailed.
The three women have described initially being held in a cramped, suffocating single room with a total of 21 women and 7 children for five days, with virtually no food or water or access to a bathroom.
The Taliban held them for several weeks and abusively interrogated them, without allowing them access to a lawyer or other due process rights, forcing them to confess by force, and severely torturing them.
The Afghan authorities also forced the families of the three women to hand over the original titles to their properties as the price of their release, with the threat that the Taliban would confiscate the property if the women got into trouble again.
For this reason, the organization has called on the Taliban to release “immediately” all those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest.
“They must respect the rights of everyone to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, including journalists covering the protests. They must end all arbitrary detentions, guarantee due process, including the immediate charging of suspects in custody before a independent judge and provide immediate access to a lawyer,” HRW said in a statement.
They have also called on the Taliban authorities to hold the people in accordance with the UN’s Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, saying that anyone responsible for torture or other ill-treatment “must be impartially investigated and duly prosecuted.”
“Afghan women and girls have faced some of the harshest consequences of the Taliban regime and have led the difficult fight to protect rights in Afghanistan,” Barr said.
“Unfortunately, their pleas to the international community for support have gone unanswered,” he warned.
