The NGO Human Right Watch (HRW) has denounced Thursday the torture and ill-treatment allegedly suffered by three Afghan women detained for protesting against Taliban abuses.
Archive - Two women in burqa in Afghanistan -
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According to the women's testimony to the organization, they have experienced threats, beatings, dangerous conditions of detention as well as denial of due process.
In addition, authorities reportedly assaulted and tasered the women's male relatives, shedding light on the Taliban's treatment of women protesters in custody and the Taliban's efforts to silence the protest movement.
"It is hard to overstate the incredible bravery of these and other Afghan women protesting Taliban abuses," said HRW's deputy women's rights director Heather Barr.
"The stories of these women show how deeply threatened the Taliban feel by their activities, and the lengths to which the Taliban will go to try to silence them," she 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 family members for several weeks at the Ministry of Interior 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.
Tamana Paryani, one of the first protesters to be arbitrarily detained under the Taliban government, videotaped herself when the Taliban raided her house at night looking for her, and then promptly posted the video on social media.
"I didn't know them well, but I was scared then," Paryani has maintained. "I woke up in the night and my whole body was shaking. We were very scared. We knew we would be arrested," he has detailed.
The three women described being initially held in a cramped and suffocating single room with a total of 21 women and seven children for five days, with virtually no food, water or access to a bathroom.
The Taliban held them for several weeks and interrogated them abusively, without allowing them access to a lawyer or other due process rights, forcing them to forcibly confess and severely torturing them.
The Afghan authorities also forced the families of the three women to hand over the original titles to their property as the price of release, threatening that the Taliban would confiscate the property if the women got into trouble again.
The organization has therefore called on the Taliban to "immediately" release all those detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest.
"They must respect the rights of all to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, including journalists covering protests. They must end all arbitrary detentions, ensure due process, including immediate arraignment of suspects in custody before an independent judge, and provide immediate access to a lawyer," HRW said in a statement.
They have also called on the Taliban authorities to hold individuals in accordance with the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, noting 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 Taliban rule and have led the difficult struggle to protect rights in Afghanistan," Barr said.
"Unfortunately, their pleas to the international community to support them have gone unanswered," she has warned.
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