By Rukhshana Media
Despite the Taliban’s violent crackdown on women’s rights protests, a group of women on Friday in Kabul called on the Taliban to release women activists abducted in connection with women’s demonstrations.
Zahra, a protester who only used her first name, told Rukhshana Media that they gathered to raise their voice and advocate for the abducted women dissidents.
“Raising our voice is the least we can do because we are tired of the world and Afghan people’s silence,” she said.
Since January 19, the night the Taliban raided houses of several women dissidents in Kabul, the group abducted at least eight people, including four women’s rights activists, according to family members, friends, and activists.
The Taliban spokesmen repeatedly denied arresting the women, but family members, eyewitnesses, and friends confirm that the Taliban is behind the abduction.
Zahra Mohammadi, a dentist and a women’s rights activist was abducted from her workplace in Kabul, friends and activists told Rukhshana Media on Thursday.
A day earlier, on Wednesday, when Mohammadi and a group of women gathered to demand the immediate release of two activists abducted two weeks ago, Mursal Ayar, another activist, was abducted from her house in Kabul.
After Mohammadi was abducted, another group of women came to gather to demand the immediate release of all their comrades.
“The screams of our comrades in the Taliban prisons are the calls for freedom. We, too, shout freedom from the prison of our home the Taliban created for us,” a protester from Thursday’s gathering told Rukhshana Media.
She calls on the Taliban and the international community to free the women activists.
Following the arrest of the four women activists in Kabul by the Taliban, Amnesty International and the U.S. Special Representative for Afghan Women also called for an end to the Taliban’s arbitrary detention of women protesters.
“The Taliban must immediately end the use of unlawful force, particularly against women and girls who are exercising their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression,” Amnesty International said in a tweet on Friday.
The U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls, and human rights, Rina Amiri, also demanded the immediate release of the women activists and their relatives, calling on the Taliban to stop the “unjust detections.”
“If the Taliban seek legitimacy from the Afghan people [and] the world, they must respect Afghans’ human rights – especially for women – including the freedom of expression,” she wrote in her Twitter account on Friday.
On Thursday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) asked the Taliban’s Ministry of Interior about the detention and whereabouts of the two women activists recently abducted and reiterated its demand for the release of all “disappeared” women activists and their relatives.
There is no news on any of the women activists who have been abducted since January 19.
