Taliban Use Harsh Tactics to Crush Afghan Women’s Rights Protest

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The Taliban’s violent crackdown on a women’s rights demonstration in Kabul last weekend marks an intimidating and unlawful escalation of sweats to suppress peaceful kick and free speech in Afghanistan.

Human Rights Watch spoke with two protesters and a substantiation and reviewed videotape footage of the incident.

Armed Taliban members were formerly present when women gathered at a planned meeting place on January 16, buttressing organizers’fears that the authorities had sneaked their dispatches. Some fled when they saw the Taliban, but about 25 women started marching to Kabul University as planned. Taliban members refocused arms at the marchers, hanging and affronting them, calling them “ dollies of the West” and “ hustlers.” One protester said Taliban members also assaulted onlookers rephotographing the kick and took their phones, which an AFP journalist verified.

As the protesters reached Kabul University, a larger Taliban group was staying in volley exchanges and girdled the women. Two protesters told Human Rights Watch that Taliban members used an electric device to shock one of them and other protesters.

As the protesters tried to escape the Taliban sequestration, they were scattered with a chemical substance similar as pepper spray that caused severe vexation of their skin, eyes, and respiratory tract. A protester said she was still passing coughing and painful skin vexation 24 hours latterly. She said Taliban members hit her and physically assaulted other protesters. They followed some of the protesters as they began to make their way home.

Since taking over Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, the Taliban have rolled back the rights of women and girls, including blocking access to education and employment for numerous. Women’s rights activists have offered a series of demurrers; the Taliban has responded by banning unauthorized demurrers.

International mortal rights law protects the right of peaceful assembly and requires authorities at all situations to grease similar assemblies and avoid gratuitous or disproportionate restrictions on them. International norms enjoin the use of gratuitous or inordinate force against protesters. The United Nations “ Guidance on Less-Lethal Munitions in Law Enforcement” says that electrical munitions and chemical annoyances shouldn’t be used in situations of purely unresistant resistance to orders from officers.