Once detained by Taliban, rights activist continues to fight for women in Kabul

It was an afternoon last fall when a number of Taliban fighters stormed a building in Kabul and arrested several women's rights activists.

Sama and her colleagues met in the Afghan city to discuss what actions they could take to show their support women's rights. Instead, they were arrested, and ended up in a Taliban prison.

“We had been taken to an unknown place,” Sama, a women's rights activist in Kabul, told CTV News this week. Sama is not the woman's real name. CTV News is using a pseudonym for safety reasons, and has removed some details of her story to prevent her identification.

She said she and other activists were hidden for several days before the Taliban publicly acknowledged they, like many others who have been vocal about women's rights, had been detained.

According to an Amnesty International report published Monday, 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. 

Among those recently detained by the Taliban are Narges Sadat, a women’s rights defender; civil society activist Fardin Fedayee; author and activist Zekria Asoli; and Afghan-French journalist Mortaza Behboudi. Former Afghan lawmaker Qais Khan Wakili and journalist Muhammad Yar Majroh are also in prison, according to the human rights group. 

Since returning to power on Aug. 15, 2021, the Taliban have banned women from working and from attending universities, and girls cannot attend school beyond the sixth grade. 

The Taliban has gone so far as to ban women from public life, issuing decrees and guidelines that violate women's rights to free movement, Amnesty International says.

Sama was released after spending more than a month in the Taliban prison.

The Taliban has been known to make protesters and other prisoners sign non-disclosure agreements upon their release so they cannot talk about their treatment, according to Amnesty International.

Despite her jail time, Sama says she will continue fighting for women until the Taliban accept and acknowledge them.

“I believe that to stand up against this brutality, we should accept prison, torture and threat," she said.

Sama says the Taliban can arrest women and put them in prison, but it can't silence them.

For the woman who used to be a human rights activist and participate in different human rights related gatherings freely, it’s now usually too risky to go out and meet her colleagues.

Still, on Monday she gathered her friends and women's rights activists in Kabul to mark International Women’s Day (March 8) a couple of days early, a move she feels may have risked her life.

“Unfortunately, it’s been two years that this day [International Women’s Day] is forgotten in Afghanistan, and women themselves have been eliminated from everywhere,” said Sama.

The situation is very hard and painful for women in Afghanistan, she said, adding, "All we can do is to resist until the Taliban acknowledge us and give us our rights."

Another woman who spoke to CTV News, who used to have a job and her own income, finds the situation almost unbearable.

She echoed Sama's words: “Women have been eliminated from everywhere. Women are really desperate and hopeless; they can’t work, can’t study.

“Most of the women who lost their jobs were the only breadwinner for their family like me, and now we are in a very difficult condition.”

The woman, who used to work in the Afghan government and whose identity CTV News is also protecting, is now unemployed. She says employment is not the only thing she is concerned about. She also worries about inequality overall.

Like Sama, she doesn't plan on giving up.

“We will continue our fight until our rights are given,” she said.

The human rights situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly, Amnesty International says, writing in its report that the Taliban’s “relentless abuses” continue every day.

Reporting for this story was paid for through The Afghan Journalists in Residence Project funded by Meta.