UN called on the Taliban to ensure the release of women activists "abducted"

By Rukhshana Media

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) called on the Taliban to ensure the release of women activists who have been “reportedly abducted from their homes” since last Wednesday in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Deborah Lyons, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, met with Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban’s interior minister, on Monday, urging “the Taliban leadership to probe [the] issue and secure the liberty of the missing Afghan women activists who were reportedly abducted from their homes last week,” UNAMA said in a Tweet.

Tamana Zaryab Paryani, her three sisters, and Parwana Ibrahimkhel, who had participated in recent anti-Taliban protests in Kabul, were arrested from their homes on January 19, according to family members and eyewitnesses.

The Taliban spokesmen in Kabul and Doha have repeatedly denied their involvement in the disappearance of the women activists.

Although, the Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a recent interview with AFP, while denying that the women activists are in their custody have uttered, that the Taliban have the right “to arrest and detain dissidents or those who break the law.”

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The call comes on the second day of the Oslo summit, where a Taliban delegation, headed by Amir Khan Muttaqi, the group’s acting foreign minister, is meeting with Norwegian officials and representatives of other western countries to demand access to Afghanistan’s frozen billion dollars.

In the first days of the meeting, the Taliban’s delegation met with some members of Afghan civil society, including women’s rights activists.

Hoda Khamosh, the representative of a group of women activists, who the Norwegian government also invited, raised the photos of her missing friends and asked the head of the Taliban delegation to release them. She requested that Muttaqi call Kabul and ask for the whereabouts and release of the activists. Reportedly Motaqi, at the participants’ insistence, called Kabul and said, “there are some diehards among us, but we will try to find the girls.”