Guess what? On International Women’s Day, March 8, Afghan women protested against Taliban’s regressive decrees in Kabul and in Ghor. However, the Taliban even then stifled the rights of women and arrested a protester from Ghor. What is more shocking is that after Habiba Sharifi protested in front of the Taliban governor’s office in Ghor, the Taliban intelligence officials have now arrested the women’s rights activist’s father.
Go deeper:
- Habiba Sharifi made a plea for Afghan women on Wednesday morning in front of the Taliban governor’s office in Ghor.
- Sources said that after Sharifi’s protest, Taliban intelligence detained her father, who is now imprisoned at the Provincial General Directorate of Intelligence of Taliban
- Sources added that the Taliban prevented media coverage of the women’s protest in Ghor.
- A group of civil society organizations in Ghor and several other provinces in western Afghanistan issued a statement calling on local Taliban officials to release Habiba Sharifi and her father.
- Ghor Civil Society Network issued a statement with the support of several other institutions in the western provinces of Afghanistan. Habiba Sharifi filed a lawsuit only for her own human rights and that of other women and should not have been detained, it said.
- “The Taliban must tolerate peaceful protests by women and give women the training and work that is their God-given right,” it said.
- The group has called on international organizations, particularly the United Nations, to work to secure the release of Habiba Sharifi and her father.
- The Taliban have not yet officially commented on the incident.
Back story: On Wednesday, Habiba Sharifi protested with a number of other women in front of the Taliban governor’s office in Ghor.
- The woman, who carried the slogan “Prohibiting education is a crime, silence is a crime of humiliation,” had been detained by the Taliban’s security command in Ghor.
- A number of other women also protested in Kabul for banning girls’ education and banning women from working by the Taliban.
Meanwhile, in another development, local sources in Parwan said that the Taliban have thrown female students’ belongings out of dormitories of the provincial government university on International Women’s Day.
- Taliban members summoned some students at Parwan University and forced their belongings out of the university dormitory, sources said.
Zoom out: It should be noted that the detention and torture of girls and women is not new, and the group has always done so. Women-led protests have become increasingly rare in Afghanistan since their return. Participants risk arrest, violence and social stigma for taking part.
- In December 2022 too, the Taliban arrested five women taking part in a protest in the Afghan capital, Kabul, against the ban on women attending universities. Three journalists were also arrested.
- According to an Amnesty International report, people who publicly criticize “abusive rules” of the Taliban have been arrested without any explanation. This includes those speaking in defence of the rights of women and girls, Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said in the report.
