Women and girls who have dared to go out into the streets or who have protested on social media against the Taliban’s strict and discriminatory rules have been met with violence, harassment and illegal arrests. This according to a new Amnesty report.
– These attacks on Afghanistan’s female population worsen with each passing day. The international community must immediately demand that the Taliban respect and protect the rights of women and girls, says Anna Johansson, Secretary General of Amnesty International Sweden.
Peaceful protesters are imprisoned and tortured
Two women Amnesty spoke to said the Taliban have also changed their strategy of intimidating women into silence after several photos of a protester’s injuries were shared on social media, the report said.
– They have started hitting us on the chest and between the legs. They did that so we wouldn’t be able to show the damage to the world, says one of the women.
Child marriage and forced marriage
Although child and forced marriages were common in Afghanistan even before the Taliban came to power, these have also increased. Some of the most important reasons for the increase are the economic and humanitarian crisis in the country, according to Amnesty.
– But also the lack of education and career opportunities for women and girls means that families see marriage as the only possibility for a better life for their daughters, says Samira Hamidi, who herself lived in Afghanistan until 2018, but now lives in Sri Lanka and works as Amnesty’s campaign leader in South Asia.
Continues to block girls’ education
The Taliban continue to block girls’ access to education. Since last March, girls are not allowed to go to school after middle school.
At the university level, female students have faced increasing restrictions on how they can dress and behave, and university management warns that they cannot protect their students “if the Taliban try to harm them,” the report says.
More is required from the international community
Now Amnesty demands that governments and international organizations, including the UN, put pressure on the Taliban, but Samira Hamidi is critical of what the international community has done so far:
– They betrayed Afghanistan’s women. Instead, the international community handed over power to the Taliban, released 5,000 of their men from prison and signed an agreement with them.
Hamidi now wants to see concrete sanctions against the Taliban government – including on their freedom of travel.