✍️ By: Hamia Naderi
This Femena investigation looks closely at what has happened — and is still happening — to Afghan women who have dared to raise their voices under Taliban rule. It tells the stories of women protesters, human rights defenders, and activists who were detained, tortured, and humiliated simply for wanting to live with dignity.
Since reclaiming power in 2021, the Taliban have issued 129 decrees that stripped women of their rights to study, work, and participate in society — turning a woman’s independent identity into a “crime.”
Main Findings
1- Why and How Women Are Detained
- Women have been arrested for protesting, refusing the compulsory hijab, or even just walking outside without a male guardian.
- Most arrests happen violently, without any legal warrant, often accompanied by verbal abuse and physical assault.
- Women have been taken from the streets, their homes, and even from so-called safe houses — nowhere has been truly safe.
2- Torture and Abuse Behind Bars
- Survivors describe being kept alone in dark, wet cells, interrogated violently, beaten, shocked with electricity, and constantly threatened.
- They were repeatedly degraded with slurs like “prostitute” or “spy” and subjected to both verbal and sexual harassment.
- Women from minority groups, especially the Hazara, faced even harsher treatment.
3- Living Conditions in the Prisons
- The cells were filthy, overcrowded, and lacked even basic hygiene.
- Food and water were scarce and contaminated, leaving women sick and malnourished.
- During menstruation, women were given no sanitary supplies and left to cope in humiliation.
4- Children Behind Bars
- Some women were imprisoned alongside their children.
- These children witnessed the violence against their mothers and endured the trauma of prison life themselves.
5- The Aftermath: Psychological and Social Impact
- Many women came out broken — struggling with depression, panic attacks, isolation, and a deep sense of worthlessness.
- Stigma from their communities made it impossible for some to return to their old lives or resume their activism.
- The scars of torture and prison — physical and emotional — often remain long after release.
6- No Justice, No Fair Process
- The Taliban scrapped the Afghan constitution and replaced the justice system with their version of Hanafi religious law.
- Women were detained without charge, without access to lawyers, and without their families being informed.
- Those who were freed often owed it to family pleas, intervention by local elders, or public attention to their cases.
7- Recommendations
- To women: keep your activism as discreet as possible, protect your digital security, and consider using pseudonyms.
- To the international community: stand more firmly with Afghan women, and hold the Taliban accountable for these abuses.
Conclusion
This report shows that for Afghan women, Taliban prisons are not just cells — they are places where humanity itself is attacked. Women are humiliated, tortured, and stripped of their identities.
Yet despite all this, Afghan women continue to resist, to speak up, and to fight back — even when it costs them everything.
Their courage demands not just admiration, but real, sustained support from the world. Standing with them is not charity — it is justice.
