By Bahar Khademi
The Taliban police have arrested three men in relation to the suicide of a young woman in the central province of Bamyan on Tuesday, November 2.
“A 27-year-old woman named Khadija committed suicide by hanging herself in Nawabad village around noon on Tuesday,” Maulvi Siddiqullah Musafir, the Taliban police chief in Bamyan province told Rukhshana Media.
“We have arrested three men who we suspect have something to do with her suicide,” said the Taliban police chief. He did not provide further information about the woman and her relationship with the suspects.
A neighbour of the victim who spoke on condition of anonymity told Rukhshana Media that Khadija was struggling with domestic violence and as a result, she aborted her child.
Khadija was the second woman who reportedly committed suicide in a month in the province.
“The first case was a month ago in Saighan district of Bamyan, where a girl committed suicide after she was caught with a boy inside a house. The boy fled, but the girl committed suicide,” said the Taliban police chief.
The Taliban have punished unmarried couples who are found together with flogging. In October, the Taliban flogged two couples in Ghor province alone.
Since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August, the group has effectively dismantled the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and halted activities of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the two primary organizations in charge of investigating violence against women and domestic abuses.
The Taliban acting Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice Sheikh Mohammad Khalid said that the group is working on a framework to establish a women’s ministry, but he did not provide a timeline. The group also claimed to be working on a framework to allow women to return to their work and secondary education, again, without providing a timeline.
