A protest against Taliban rule was staged indoors in Kabul on Thursday on the cusp of the second anniversary of the fall of Afghanistan.
A group of women, who called themselves the Powerful Women’s Movement of Afghanistan, held the protest to call on the international community to not engage with the Taliban.
“The international community is witness to the crimes against humanity and the Taliban’s gender apartheid of Afghanistan,” a spokesperson for the protest said, adding that any recognition of the Taliban is legitimizing terrorism and these crimes.
The protest kicked off with the women recording themselves saying “ “Freedom is our message! Overthrowing the Taliban is our goal!” They shouted slogans directed at the Taliban including, “You are ignorant, you are murderers, you are rapists and mercenaries! I am a free woman!”
The slogans also called for women to be able to choose to wear the hijab and calling out the Taliban for its treatment of women that goes against the teachings of Islam. “Rape in prison is also according to the Qur’an?” Shouted one protestor.
The group claimed that two years ago, the fate of the Afghan people was surrendered to the Taliban under the “shameful deal” struck in Doha, and since then the Taliban has taken more than 30 million people “hostage” in Afghanistan.
They say that the foundations of the Afghan people’s lives have crumbled and the hope for a normal life in Afghanistan has been shattered, as individual and social freedoms have disappeared, and darkness and ignorance have filled their place.
Referring to the Taliban’s restrictions against the people, especially the women and girls, the protesters said that the world knows Afghans “cannot even breathe” without the orders of the “Taliban terrorist group”, and they called on the international community to not approve this behaviour by interacting with the Taliban under any pretext or “trick”.
The members of the movement said that for two years, the world has watched as all manner of crimes against humanity are committed including gender and ethnic apartheid, forced displacements, and terrorization of the population by the Taliban. Therefore they pleaded that there be no formal recognition of the Taliban as a government in order to not ignore the rights of more than 30 million poeple in Afghanistan and to not give legitimacy to “terrorists”.
