An anti-domestic violence mural predating the Taliban takeover. In 2022 the Islamist militants decreed that women in public must only allow their eyes to be seen.An anti-domestic violence mural predating the Taliban takeover. In 2022 the Islamist militants decreed that women in public must only allow their eyes to be seen.
The family of 16-year-old Zahra* said she and another teenage girl were arrested in a shop in west Kabul in December 2023.The Taliban bans women from parks. The sign, in Pashto, reads: ‘Dear sisters! Hijab and veil are your dignity and in your benefit in this world and the hereafter.’Her mother, Somaia*, says Zahra and her friend were detained for two weeks before being released. When she came home, Zahra was “not the girl who had left home two weeks before”.
“Then he started touching my private parts,” Amina said. “I fainted twice during the interrogation, but every time, he poured cold water over my head.” “Once I took all of my mother’s medication, but my family took me to hospital. Every time I remember that they touched me, I can’t bear living,” Amina said.
In December 2023, a 23-year-old university student from the same neighbourhood was also reportedly arrested by the Taliban. Zan Times reporters were told that she had been sexually abused. “It is just brutal that a young girl goes to university and her dead body comes home,” one interviewee told the journalists.that the women who were arrested “violated Islamic values and rituals and encouraged society and other respected sisters to go for bad hijab … n every province, those who go without hijab will be arrested.”