New Delhi: The Taliban have been coming on stronger and arresting young girls for violating the ‘hijab rules’, across the Afghan capital, Kabul. The girls, who were detained in shopping centres, classes and street markets – were accused of “spreading and encouraging others to wear a bad hijab” and wearing makeup, reported The Guardian.
The latest development adds to the mounting challenges faced by Afghan women.
Since taking power in Afghanistan, the Taliban had time and again decreed that women should cover themselves from head to toe, revealing only their eyes.
According to The Guardian report, a 16-year-old girl Lale shared the ordeal she had faced during the arrest by the Taliban along with a number of other girls at her English language class. She said girls who confronted the men and refused to go were beaten, while she was lashed on her feet and legs when trying to reason with them. Her father was later badly beaten for “raising immoral girls”.
“My attire was modest and even included a face mask – a precaution I had adopted since the Taliban takeover. But they beat me anyway, insisting that my outfit was improper,” The Guardian quoted Lale as saying.
The Taliban repeatedly labelled them as “infidels”, for studying English and for aspiring to go abroad, she added.
She was released after community elders intervened and she was made to sign a document pledging not to leave her home without the mandatory head-covering. She has also been banned from attending her English classes.
“I was barred from school when the Taliban took over in 2021, and now I cannot even go to my private classes,” she said, adding, “I can no longer imagine anything for my future other than staying home and getting married. I saw how badly my father was beaten because I went to the [English] course. When I saw his photos after returning home, I was so scared that I would lose him. I don’t have the motivation to study after this. I don’t want this experience again.”
Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s chief spokesperson, claimed in a voice message to The Guardian that families of the detained women had raised concerns with the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice that their daughters were supported by foreign groups to promote “bad hijab”.
“As a result, they were taken to police stations and freed on bail,” he said, adding that such arrests were “not usual practice”.
The detentions happened less than a week after the UN security council requested a special envoy to engage with the Taliban, particularly over gender and women’s rights. The Taliban rejected this proposal, however, claiming it would complicate the situation by imposing external solutions.
“The arrests of women in Afghanistan are a further crackdown on the basic rights of women and can be intimidating and put more pressure even on women who are still working in the health, primary education and nutrition sectors, and they would not appear in public as they used to,” The Guardian quoted Fereshta Abbasi, a researcher at the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch, as saying.