By Muzhda Ahmadi
Roqia Saee has been so traumatized while detained by the Taliban that there are things she still cannot speak of.
The women’s rights activist was detained by Afghanistan’s de facto authorities twice.
She has since fled Afghanistan – but her trauma remains.
The 29-year-old was involved early on in Kabul street protests against the Taliban when the group seized power of Afghanistan in August 2021.
Ms Saee fought hard for her rights that were being systematically dismantled under Taliban rule. She’d witnessed in horror as basic human rights afforded to men were increasingly denied to girls and women.
It was the beginning of the Taliban’s process that today sees treatment of Afghan women described as “gender apartheid”, including by UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett “gender apartheid”.
Ms Saee witnessed the early signs of this process and did everything in her power to try to stop it.
But one day, she got caught.
Punished for calling for girls’ education
It was Friday 22 December 2022 and Ms Saee joined a number of women in west Kabul’s Dehbori area demanding the Taliban restore their rights to education and employment.
As their demonstration began, Taliban forces arrived and set about assaulting anyone in their path. The women soon ended the protest and scattered, including Ms Saee, who got into a taxi.
But she was pursued.
“The Taliban chased me. The taxi driver got scared and stopped the car. When they [the Taliban] pulled me out of the taxi, they told me to give them my mobile phone,” Ms Saee says.
“After they saw clips and photos of previous protests, they said to each other, This is one of those Western spies and prostitutes.”
Then they began to violently hit her.
“They hit my left ear with their fists. At that moment, I felt my eardrum burst, and I became dizzy. After that, I didn’t resist and got into their vehicle,” she says.
She was taken along with four of the other protestors to a station in Police District Three.
What happened next constitutes torture.
‘Three nights and four days’
“They blindfolded my eyes and tied my hands to a chair. Before starting the interrogation, they poured cold water over me,” she says.
Female Taliban officers physically assaulted her while asking questions and then confined her to a solitary cell.
“In the room, there was a cream-colored carpet with a mattress, pillow, and blanket. I had no privacy – there was a surveillance camera installed,” Ms Saee says.
“Sanitary conditions were not observed at all, and when I went to the toilet, they would blindfold me.”
Ms Saee says she was interrogated in this fashion on both her first and third nights in detention.
“They didn’t ask questions normally. They asked them terrifyingly. During the interrogation, I was beaten, water was poured on me, I was threatened with death and subjected to physical and psychological torture,” she says.
“They placed a gun on my head, threatening to shoot me.
“By the end of it, my condition had completely deteriorated to the point where my head was spinning, my hands and feet were trembling, I couldn’t move, and I was both terrified and menstruating.”
Ms Saee says Taliban forces called her derogatory terms throughout her time in detention as a way of demoralizing her.
“They used foul language. Even though they knew my name, they never called me by it during interrogations. They always referred to me as a prostitute and other derogatory terms that cannot be repeated,” she says.
“After three nights and four days”, Ms Saee says was released with a condition levelled with threats that she will not speak of her ordeal in detention or protest against the Taliban again.
“We were not allowed to share anything that happened to us in prison with anyone and we were not to take any action against the Taliban,” she says.
Ms Saee’s claims of her treatment in prison are backed up by photographs of severe bruising on various parts of her body. Her story is also consistent with other women who have dared to share their story despite their terror.
Ms Saee has only felt secure to share these details since leaving Afghanistan and seeking asylum in Germany.
Despite the physical safety, she is still mentally recovering.
She sends a photo of the medications she has taken to try and survive in the aftermath.
“I couldn’t sleep day or night. I would wake up screaming from nightmares. I’ve taken medication for a long time, but I couldn’t sleep for more than two hours,” she says.
It wasn’t the first time the mother-of-two experienced Taliban violence. Her husband was a member of the Air Force under the previous Afghan government. He was killed by Taliban forces four years ago.
Ms Saee joined the Afghan National Security Forces herself in the final years of the previous government. It was a time when the casualties among the security forces were very high, but she handled more administrative tasks.
A return to protesting
Despite her first experience in detention, Ms Saee felt she could not remain on the sidelines in the face of the Taliban’s oppression.
On 26 March 2023, she joined another street protest in Kabul streets to demonstrate against the closure of girls’ high schools.
In videos seen by Rukhshana Media, Ms Saee can be seen in the march that was planned to run from Kabul suburbs of Pol-e Sokhta to Dast-e-Barchi, loudly chanting slogans against the Taliban.
“Let the girls go to school! We will raise our voices for the school bell! You have taken my land, but you will not take my lessons and homework!” she chants in the video.
But Taliban forces again violently descended on the women, capturing Ms Saee along with Fatima Mohammadi and Malalai Hashimi. They were all taken to Police District Three again.
Ms Saee was released after only one day. She says it was through the mediation of local elders. But she was also forced to partake in a filmed confession video.
Ms Saee declines to discuss the details of how she was forced to make the video. She says the process left her with serious psychological harm.
The Taliban cannot bear criticism
The Taliban has released several videos in which detained women give “confessions” or reasons for their protests, such as, they are working under foreign orders or they are being paid to defame the Taliban.
These forced confessions are shared publicly, serving as a way for the Taliban to smear human rights activists.
The Taliban shut down all criticism but especially that which stems from the Afghan people. It instead sets up narratives around dissent to explain it away. In the case of women’s protest groups, the Taliban say the women are being paid to demonstrate or they’re trying to get in trouble to make a case to seek asylum abroad.
Human rights monitoring organizations have verified and confirmed the Taliban’s mistreatment of women in prison.
In a letter to Taliban’s intelligence chief Abdul Haq Wasiq from Amnesty International on January 22, Amnesty highlighted that women activists are subjected to mistreatment and torture in Taliban detention.
Despite the extensive evidence and multiple accounts, the Taliban has consistently denied any mistreatment or torture of women and girls in prison.
