Afghanistan: Taliban ‘opening doors for outstanding women’

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Many women fear for their lives now that the Western-backed government has collapsed

Reportedly, Taliban fighters went door to door looking for women who played a role in public life, painting outside their homes to mark their locations.

It comes as Afghan women journalists fear for their lives and have been “quit work” after the country fell to the Taliban.

Hamira Rezaei, who grew up in Afghanistan until she was 13 and now lives in Dudley, has spoken to the media about how the new regime is already making lists of women to target.

“Just an hour ago, I got an update from Kabul where they go house to house looking for women activists, bloggers, YouTubers and any women who have had a role in developing civil society in Afghanistan,” in an interview with BBC Women’s Hour.

“They go door to door to target these women and mark the doors with bright pink or brightly colored paint to ensure ‘this is the home we need to go back to and do something about them.'”

Prominent women in public life are issuing increasingly desperate warnings amid fears that the hardline Islamist group will impose brutal punishments and oversee an oppressive regime targeting women.

One of her TV channels is still a woman reporting the news

Locals also say that images of women on billboards have been overshadowed by the Taliban’s insistence that women should be completely covered by a burqa.

The group is known for its brutal stance against women, who were denied access to education under the previous Taliban-led government and were largely confined to their homes.

There were reports of women being taken as sex slaves and brutally raped, while in July others were told they had been taken home from work and ordered not to return to their jobs.

Afghanistan’s first female mayor said she is now waiting for the militants to come and kill her.

Ms. Rezaei added: “There are still too many people stuck there, abandoned in Afghanistan. The women I speak to [who are still there]Suddenly, within two minutes, we both started crying.

When I say ‘what the worst pain you’ve ever felt’, they say ‘not because the Taliban are back, it’s not that the government has abandoned us, the international community hasn’t let us down, but that’s because the twenty years I’ve worked, it’s all for nothing’.

“That’s because the future of their children is bleak, because the rights that children have, for example, that the Hazara community have gained in the last twenty years, are gone.”

Most of the television channels supervised their broadcasts.

Most of the channels have removed their anchors from the screen.

No music has been played on most channels since this morning.

The media is moving towards Talibanization.

– Mustafa 47 (@CombatJourno) August 16, 2021

Despite the drastic change in the form and type of media being broadcast in Afghanistan, one private TV channel still has a woman broadcasting the news â?? Without full Islamic headscarf. pic.twitter.com/MW3LxFQ2oW

– Mustafa 47 (@CombatJourno) August 16, 2021

In March, the Taliban were forced to deny that three media workers were shot dead as they were returning home from an office in Jalalabad.

In May, a bombing outside a school in Kabul that killed 90 teenage girls leaving their classrooms was blamed on the Taliban.

Politicians are also at risk according to Zarifa Ghafari, 27, who rose to prominence in 2018 when she became Afghanistan’s first female mayor.

On Sunday, she told me, “I’m sitting here waiting for them to come. There is no one to help me or my family.”

I just sit with them and with my husband. They will come to people like me and kill me. I can’t leave my family.

Meanwhile, journalist Mustafa Kazemi said that most TV channels have now kept their presenters off the screen.

A journalist who changed her name to “Aisha” for her safety said that reports of women and girls being beaten, forcibly taken as wives and raped, made her afraid that she would soon share their fate with her.

“First of all, I’m worried about myself because I’m a girl and a journalist too,” she told the newspaper.

For many years, I worked as a journalist… to raise the voice of Afghans, especially Afghan women, but now our identity is being destroyed and nothing has been done by us to deserve it.

Over the past hour, several Afghan female friends in Kabul have told me that the Taliban are in their neighbourhoods, going door-to-door, looking for women in government and media, and making lists. Someone sent me a picture from her living room showing Taliban gunmen outside. I wrote “I love you”. Dr??????

– Amy Ferris Rottman (@Amie_FR) August 16, 2021

I can’t stop thinking about the Afghan woman on the radio this morning who said the Taliban are going to the activists’ homes and painting pink signs on their front doors, so they know to come back and deal with them…just terrifying. Tweet embed

— Claire Cohen (@clairecohen) August 16, 2021

“In the past 24 hours, our lives have changed and we have been confined to our homes, death threatens us at every moment.”

Other women in the country say the Taliban have been painting the activists’ doors to distinguish them from future sanctions.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the Security Council on Monday to “use all tools at its disposal to suppress the global terrorist threat in Afghanistan” and ensure respect for basic human rights.

He said: ‘We are receiving chilling reports of severe restrictions on human rights across the country. I am particularly concerned by accounts of increasing human rights violations against women and girls in Afghanistan.

“We cannot and must not abandon the people of Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gholam Isakzai, told the Security Council on Monday that he was speaking on behalf of millions of people “whose fate hangs in the balance,” as he warned that women and girls are on the verge of losing their freedom to go to school, work and participate in political life. economic and social of the country.

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