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ISLAMABAD — The lives of Afghan girls and women are being destroyed by a “suffocating” crackdown by the Taliban since they took energy almost a yr in the past, Amnesty Worldwide mentioned in a report launched Wednesday.
After they captured the capital, Kabul, in August 2021 and ousted the internationally backed authorities, the Taliban offered themselves as having moderated since their first time in energy, within the Nineties. Initially, Taliban officers spoke of permitting girls to proceed to work and women to proceed their schooling.
As an alternative, they shaped an all-male authorities stacked with veterans of their hard-line rule that has banned women from attending faculty from seventh grade, imposed all-covering gown that leaves solely the eyes seen and restricted girls’s entry to work.
Amnesty mentioned the Taliban have additionally decimated protections for these dealing with home violence, detained girls and women for minor violations and contributed to a surge in baby marriages. The report additionally documented the torture and abuse of ladies arrested by the Taliban for protesting in opposition to restrictions.
“Taken collectively, these insurance policies kind a system of repression that discriminates in opposition to girls and women in virtually each facet of their lives,” the report mentioned. “This suffocating crackdown in opposition to Afghanistan’s feminine inhabitants is growing day-to-day.”
The group’s researchers visited Afghanistan in March as a part of a nine-month-long investigation performed from September 2021 to June 2022. They interviewed 90 girls and 11 women, between 14 and 74 years-old, throughout Afghanistan.
Amongst them had been girls detained for protesting who described torture by the hands of Taliban guards, together with beatings and threats of dying.
One girl advised Amnesty that guards beat her and different girls on the breasts and between the legs, “in order that we couldn’t present the world.” She mentioned one advised her, “I can kill you proper now, and nobody would say something.”
A college scholar who was detained mentioned she was electrically shocked on her shoulder, face, neck and elsewhere, whereas the Taliban shouted insults at her. One held a gun at her and advised her, “I’ll kill you, and nobody will be capable to discover your physique.”
The report mentioned charges of kid, early and compelled marriage in Afghanistan are surging beneath Taliban rule.
The rise, Amnesty mentioned, is fueled by Afghanistan’s financial and humanitarian disaster and the shortage of schooling and job prospects for ladies and women. The report documented circumstances of compelled marriages of ladies and women to Taliban members — beneath stress by the Taliban member or by the ladies’s households.
One girl from a central province of Afghanistan advised Amnesty that she was compelled her to marry off her 13-year-old daughter to a 30-year-old neighbor in trade for 60,000 Afghanis (round US$670). She mentioned she felt relieved as a result of her daughter “gained’t be hungry anymore.”
She mentioned she was additionally contemplating the identical for her 10-year-old daughter however was holding off in hopes the woman might get an schooling and finally safe a job to help the household. “In fact, in the event that they don’t open the college, I must marry her off,” she added.
“You’ve got a patriarchal authorities, struggle, poverty, drought, women out of faculty. With all of those elements mixed … we knew baby marriage was going to undergo the roof,” mentioned Stephanie Sinclair, director of Too Younger to Wed, who was quoted within the report.
The Taliban seized Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces had been withdrawing from Afghanistan, ending a virtually 20-year struggle in opposition to the Taliban’s insurgency. The world has refused to acknowledge the Taliban’s rule, demanding it respect human rights and present tolerance for different teams. The U.S. and its allies have reduce off billions in growth funds that saved the federal government afloat, in addition to froze billions in Afghan nationwide property.
This despatched the already shattered economic system into freefall, growing poverty dramatically and creating one of many world’s worst humanitarian crises. Thousands and thousands, struggling to feed their households, are saved alive by a large U.N.-led reduction effort.
Amnesty referred to as on the worldwide group to take motion to guard Afghan girls and women.
“Lower than one yr after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, their draconian insurance policies are depriving tens of millions of ladies and women of their proper to guide protected, free and fulfilling lives,” mentioned Agnès Callamard, Amnesty secretary basic.
“If the worldwide group fails to behave, will probably be abandoning girls and women in Afghanistan, and undermining human rights all over the place,” she mentioned.
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