By Rukhshana Media
The Taliban are “using harsh tactics to crush Afghan women’s rights Protest,” Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
The new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, which investigated women’s protest in the Afghan capital on Sunday, January 16, raised the alarm about the “escalation of efforts to suppress peaceful protest and free speech in Afghanistan.”
In this protest, the Taliban used batons and pepper spray to disperse the protesters marching toward Kabul University when the Taliban encircled them. “Near the University, they encircled us and beat us with batons and pepper-sprayed us. But we stood together in a corner, and some people joined us. We continued chanting,” Hoda Khamoush, an organizer, told Rukhshana Media on Sunday.
The report, which is based on interviews with protesters and a witness, and a review of video footage, noted the Taliban’s use of force and new tactics, including electric devices and chemical spray, to crush women’s protest.
In another report, also released on Tuesday, HRW and the Human Rights Institute at San Jose State University that looked at the lives of women under the Taliban in Ghazni province, said that “Taliban rule has had a devastating impact on Afghan women and girls.”
A day earlier, on Monday, a group of UN experts warned that the Taliban are institutionalizing “systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls” in Afghanistan.
The Taliban has escalated repression of dissent, curtailing civic freedoms, and systematically violating women’s rights when the country is marching towards famine and starvation.
