The Taliban raided the home of a women’s rights activist and arrested her and her three sisters in Kabul, apparently in response to a recent protest, a witness said.
Tamana Zaryabi Paryani was one of 25 women who took part in a protest on Sunday against restrictions placed on them, including the compulsory wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, for women. On Wednesday, about 10 armed men claiming to be from the Taliban intelligence department broke into his apartment, said a person from the neighborhood who saw the arrest.
Shortly before she and her sisters were taken away, pictures of Paryani were posted on social media showing her frightened, out of breath and screaming for help, saying the Taliban were pounding on her door.
“Help please, the Taliban have come to our house… only my sisters are at home,” she is heard saying in the footage. There are other female voices in the background, crying. “I can not open the door. Please help!”
Associated Press footage from the scene Thursday showed the apartment’s dented metal front door slightly ajar. The occupants of a neighboring apartment ran into their house, not wanting to speak to reporters. An exterior steel-slatted security door was closed and padlocked, making it impossible to enter Paryani’s apartment.
The witness said that the armed men went up to Paryani’s third-floor apartment and started banging on the front door, ordering her to open it.
When she refused, they repeatedly kicked the door until it opened, the witness said. “They took four females, they were all sisters,” the witness said, adding that one of them was Paryani.
The witness spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from the Taliban.
Taliban appointed police spokesman in Kabul, Gen Mobin Khan, tweeted that Paryani’s social video post was fabricated drama. A Taliban intelligence spokesman, Khalid Hamraz, neither confirmed nor denied the arrest.
He tweeted that “insults to the religious and national values of the Afghan people are no longer tolerated,” a reference to Sunday’s rally during which protesters appeared to burn a white burqa, the head-to-toe garment that leaves only a slit mesh for the eyes
Hamraz accused rights activists of smearing Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers and their security forces to gain asylum in the West.
Since coming to power in mid-August, the Taliban have imposed widespread restrictions, many of them against women. They have been banned from many jobs outside of health and education, their access to education beyond sixth grade restricted, and they have been ordered to wear hijabs. However, the Taliban stopped short of imposing the burqa, which was mandatory when they ruled Afghanistan in the 1990s.
At Sunday’s demonstration, women carried banners demanding equal rights and shouted “Justice!” They said they might be forced to wear the hijab. Rally organizers said Paryani attended the protest, which dispersed after the Taliban fired pepper spray into the crowd.
Paryani belongs to a rights group called Seekers of Justice, which has organized several demonstrations in Kabul, including the one on Sunday. The members have not spoken publicly about Paryani’s arrest, but have been sharing the video of her.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said that since taking power, the Taliban “have rolled back the rights of women and girls, including blocking access to education and employment for many.”
“Women’s rights activists have staged a series of protests; the Taliban responded by banning unauthorized protests,” HRW said in a statement after Sunday’s protest.
The Taliban have increasingly targeted human rights groups in Afghanistan, and local and international journalists covering the demonstrations have often been detained and sometimes beaten.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism