By: Ziba Balkhi
A pregnant woman, who had protested in Balkh province for women’s rights, suffered such a beating from Taliban guards that she miscarried her child at five months, and was imprisoned. Here, she shares her story.
Sajeda* has photos of her battered body. She doesn’t want the photos published, but she wants to show proof of the violence the Taliban guards used against her. In the photos, there is a dark purple bruise on her left eye, and her back and thighs are covered in deep red and purple hues.
Sajeda first protested against the Taliban restrictions on girls not being allowed to go to school in Balkh’s capital Mazar-e-Sharif in 2021, without her family’s knowledge. She then participated in an indoor protest which was filmed for social media platforms.
“A few days passed after the online protest when one of our relatives came and told us that the police district was trying to identify the protestors and they were looking for them,” Sajeda says. “My family criticized me, and my husband scolded me, saying ’You should have thought about your child, but you want to fight with the Taliban?’”
Out of fear, Sajeda stopped voicing her disagreement. She cut off all contact with the women involved in organising the protests. But the Taliban’s restrictions on girls and women only increased.
In January 2022, she felt the need to raise her voice against the injustice of the Taliban again. “I saw girls protesting from home several times (on social media), and with a lot of searching, I was able to connect with one of them. Then in the middle of January I participated in one of the indoor protests.”
As Sajeda recalls, on the morning of Saturday January 29, a military vehicle came to their gate. Taliban guards entered their home and gave Sajeda a severe and violent beating, then arrested her husband. “That night, my husband was imprisoned in the police district,” she says. “The next day, the county councillor, the mullah of the area, and some other elders went to the police district with some papers that gave a guarantee that he will not allow his wife to protest in any way. He signed and approved the paper and my husband was released.”
Sajeda says that the beating induced her pregnancy into a miscarriage. “I was five months pregnant and I was in severe pain. When I visited the doctor, unfortunately, my baby was already dead and after being in bed for a night, I had to have a curettage {where the uterus is cleaned out to prevent infection}. I was not in a very good condition,” she says.
Sajeda was still recovering about a week later when the Taliban went to her house again to arrest her. “I was sick and still bleeding profusely. My physical and mental condition was not good,” she says. “It was February 8th when they came from the police district with a lady observing the hijab and they took me away.”
Sajeda was put in prison, accused of having organised the protest she attended. “One of their intelligence officers said that I had planned the protest, when I did not even know about the one who had organized it,” she said. But ultimately they had no proof and after 20 days, she was released.
“Because they could not find anything in my phone in connection to organizing the protest, they issued me a 50,000 afghanis fine, an amount equal to around US$550 dollars, as a condition for my release,” she says, which her family paid.
The Taliban regularly arrests and intimidates women protestors in an attempt to scare them into silence. In an investigative report, Etillat Roz has found that at least 1115 women have been imprisoned by the Taliban in more than a year. Shame is also used regularly by the Taliban, with some women forced to confess their “wrongdoing” before the media.
During the 20 days Sajeda spent in the Taliban women’s prison in Balkh, she witnessed such terrible treatment of women that she was even more shocked after her own ordeal.
“Because my physical condition was not good and I was bleeding profusely, they did not beat me much,” she says. “But I witnessed such ugly behavior and beatings against other women.”
Most of the women being held in the prison with her were people who had been accused of adultery, running away from home, or disobeying their husbands. According to her, there were three or four new women and girls being brought in every day by the Taliban from different parts of Balkh province.
Violence, beatings, abusive words, and rough handling were commonplace. “Some women would be taken away under various pretexts and they would return completely pale,” Sajeda says. “From the stains on their necks and their mental state, we understood something terrible had happened to them, but none of them told what happened and what was going on.”
“Maybe they were threatened that they should not tell anyone,” she adds.
Sajeda says some of the women would be taken at night around 9pm and then return to the shared cell at one or two o’clock in the morning. “In my opinion, these movements were being done without the knowledge of the person in charge of the prison, because they were not allowed on the women’s side. But a number of women knew where they were being taken and why. They used to bathe and put on some make up,” Sajeda says.
She believes most of the inmates were in the prison without any convincing reason. One of the inmates had been there for almost seven months already when Sajeda arrived.
“Her husband had beaten her over some marital disputes and she had taken refuge in her father’s house. When her husband found out, he filed a complaint and went to his father-in-law’s house with the Taliban forces and took his wife to the court and she wanted a divorce. Both sides had lawyers,” Sajeda says, recounting what she had been told by the woman.
But instead of being granted a divorce because her husband did not agree, the woman was put in prison on the charge of running away.
“The lady had been in prison for almost seven months and the lawyer had done everything, but the judge and the husband’s party did not consent to her release even with a guarantee,” Sajeda says.
Some of the imprisoned women are not allowed to have visitors, Sajeda says, but she did not know why. One of her friends, who was imprisoned for demonstrating in September 2021, is still in prison 18 months later. “From the time she was imprisoned until now, no one is allowed to meet her,” Sajeda says.
A defense lawyer based in Balkh province, who agreed to talk to Rukhshana Media using a pseduonym Nader, says most of the women in the prison are kept there on trumped up or grossly unjust charges.
“Most of the women are those who have either been accused of running away from home, or having sex outside of marriage. Or if they saw a woman talking to a man in the city or market, they’ve arrested her without any trial saying, you are having an illicit relationship. Or if the husband has been violent to his wife and she has not remained silent in front of her husband’s oppression, the Taliban imprisons her for disrespecting her husband,” Nader says.
Nader confirmed the violence and beatings in the prisons in Balkh province are known to the lawyers and they are at risk themselves for trying to seek justice. He said one of the women defense lawyers, who he knows, was arrested and imprisoned by the Taliban for an unknown reason nine months ago.
After a month, she was released. “This lawyer was 23 years old. When she was released from prison, I only saw her once. There were bruises and scars on her face,” he says.
He says the Taliban warned her not to tell anyone or the media about what happened to her in prison nor about her arrest. “No one even knows if she is alive or dead. Her phone numbers are switched off and she is not on social media at all. I don’t know anything about her either,” he adds.
Another defense lawyer Basir, also a pseudonym, has seen the violence in the prison firsthand. Sometimes, in order to deal with the cases of his clients, he goes to the prison to meet them.
He says that women in prison are severely beaten and some are raped, but they are always threatened not to talk about it with anyone but it’s not known what they are threatened with. He is never allowed to have a private conversation with a client.
“When I go to talk to my client, two or three prison employees stand beside us, and my client can’t talk to me clearly and explain their problems,” he says. “They do not want anyone to know about the evil being done to women in prison.”
