By Rukhshana media reporters
Taliban forces are administering electric shocks to women over breaches of a hijab mandate so strict it even requires them to cover their faces in public, reporting by Rukhshana Media has found.
Victims and eyewitnesses described women being knocked unconscious by electric shocks as they resisted efforts by Afghanistan’s notorious morality police to take them into custody over their dress. Others reported that the devices were being widely used in women’s prisons.
The rights group Amnesty International has called for a global ban on devices that deliver a shock on direct contact, calling them “inherently abusive” and saying they can cause serious injury and even death. International policing standards state that electric shocks should only be used as a last resort and in self-defence.
Nafisa*, 20, was shopping for winter scarves with her sister in Kabul last October when the pair were confronted by four uniformed Taliban morality police. One demanded to know why she wasn’t dressed like her sister, who wore head to toe black with a face covering, then ordered her to get into his vehicle. Terrified, she gripped her sister’s hand tightly and tried to stand her ground as a woman working with the police pulled her away.
“When I resisted, they gave me an electric shock. After that, I remember nothing,” recalls Nafisa, who was held overnight in a cold, dark police cell with eight other women and three girls.
One young woman had been beaten and detained for being improperly dressed, even though she was wearing full-length clothing. improper hijab, another for having contact with a man she wasn’t related to. Others had been arrested for begging on the street.
Nafisa’s older sister Zohal*, 24, stammers nervously as she remembers that day. “Nafisa fell to the ground right before my eyes and the Taliban treated her like a corpse, throwing her into the vehicle and driving away,” she says. “It was the worst moment of my life and those seconds felt like hours. I kept asking people for help, but they walked away. No one dared to say a word to the Taliban.”
Both women said they were left feeling traumatised by the incident, and both subsequently took antidepressants for a period of several months.
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Less than a year after they returned to power in 2021, the Taliban introduced stringent new rules requiring women to fully cover themselves by wearing a burqa or a full hijab with a face covering, and not go out at all unless absolutely necessary.
Enforcement was strict and included mass arrests, initially in an area of western Kabul dominated by the Hazara ethnic population, and then across other parts of the country, according to research by the United Nations. Some women were released after a few hours, but others remained in custody for days or even weeks, it found. Their release was often made contingent on male relatives promising to police their dress in future.
One source who spoke to Rukhshana on condition of anonymity recalled hearing a woman’s screams at a Taliban checkpoint in a central area of Kabul. He rushed towards the crowd that had gathered and saw a woman struggling with morality police, who were trying to pull her into a vehicle. Several men in the crowd tried to intervene and free the woman, but were told not to interfere with the work of the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which controls the Taliban’s efforts to impose Islamic law in Afghanistan, the source said. Then, one of the male officers pulled a device from his pocket and held it to the woman’s neck, shocking her multiple times until she lost consciousness and fell to the ground. Four police officers grabbed her by the arms and legs and dragged her lifeless body into the vehicle, he recalled.
Another eyewitness described an incident near a Kabul shopping mall where Taliban officers used electric shock to detain a young woman who was refusing to get into their vehicle.
“She was resisting a lot, saying, ‘I’m not going’,” said the witness. “Eventually, they used an electric shock on her. The poor woman collapsed to the ground, and they violently shoved her into the vehicle. The morality police are terrifying.”
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Nearly all women and girls who have had encounters with Taliban military or morality enforcement officers say they were subjected to violence of some kind. The widely criticised new Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice law gives officers broad authority to confront women over their clothing and administer on-the-spot punishments. Even before that was introduced, Taliban officers were using electric shock devices against women, notably on January 16, 2022, when they were used to disperse a peaceful street protest.
Wahida Amiri, a 33-year-old former detainee and women’s rights protester, described the incident in an interview with Rukhshana Media after the event.
“Their armed forces surrounded us in an open area and took us captive,” she said. “The Taliban’s treatment of women protesters in the streets was terrifying and horrific. They used teargas, fired shots into the air, and used electric shocks against women.”
While the use of electric shocks against unarmed protesters is a clear and serious violation of human rights, it appears that for Taliban officers, deploying such devices has become routine. There seems to be no formal protocol or accountability for their use, nor any oversight to prevent abuses.
Rukhshana Media has also documented incidents of women being subjected to electric shocks in prison. In 2022, Zarifa Yaqubi spent 41 days in the custody of Taliban forces who she says tortured her into making a forced confession using electric shocks and beating her with cables.
Parwana Ibrahimkhil Najrabi, another former Taliban prisoner who spent at least a month in solitary confinement, said the group used electric shocks during her arrest.
For Nafisa, the damage has been longlasting. She still remembers the prison cell, and worries about the other women she shared it with.
“I don’t know how to go on,” she said. “I think I carry the Taliban prison with me everywhere. The electric shocks, the cold and dark room, the multiple accusations, and the women whose fate is unknown.”
Note*: Names have been changed for safety reasons.
* Published in partnership with More to Her Story.
