Afghan women more at risk than ever

In two reports dated 26 and 30 October, the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women (SMAW) warned us of the serious threats posed by the Taliban regime to women and women activists. The regime has also just promulgated new measures such as banning women from talking to each other or reciting the Koran.

Since 20 October, the intelligence forces and the Taliban police have been conducting a vast campaign of house-to-house searches in Kabul, seeking women’s rights activists. At the smallest document and suspicion, women are arrested, detained and tortured. This operation poses a particular threat to the many SMAW activists, forced to go into hiding to avoid repression.

According to Afghanistan International TV, the secret services threatened the people not to take pictures and videos of the house-to-house inspection so that they are not published in the media. This is further proof that the Taliban have neither legitimacy, inside Afghanistan nor outside, they  consider Afghan citizens as their enemy and fear them, the SMAW remarks.

This comes at a time when, on 29 October, Richard Bennett, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Afghanistan, published his report on the systematic violation of the most basic rights in the prisons of the Taliban regime. Especially, he acknowledges the Taliban practice of mass rape against female prisoners.

But, as the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women points out, ‘all the institutions, national and international, including the United Nations, simply record these crimes without reacting in any way’.

Following his statements on the fate of Afghan women, the French branch of the International Committee for the Defence of Afghan Women has contacted the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. Relaying the SMAW’s appeal, it asked to be received as soon as possible so that asylum can be immediately granted to all women and activists persecuted in Afghanistan.

With our correspondents in Afghanistan.