The Kabul Tribune (KT) — Prosecutors at the first People’s Tribunal for Afghan Women, held in Madrid, described the Taliban’s systematic violations of women’s rights as a “human catastrophe.”
Orzala Nemat, one of the prosecutors, said the tribunal
convened to “clearly condemn the widespread and deliberate violations of
women’s rights by the Taliban.” She said that what Afghan women have endured
since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021 “is not only a violation of
international law but a humanitarian disaster.”
Nemat said the Taliban have “systematically carried out acts
of sexual violence, exclusion, and repression” against women. “The Taliban are
not a government but a criminal group that has built a patriarchal regime under
the guise of religion,” she said, adding that such ideology “is not accepted in
any Islamic society, nor by the people of Afghanistan.”
She noted that none of the Taliban’s senior officials have
been able to influence the group’s supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada.
Parwana Ebrahimkhil, a former Taliban prisoner and one of
the witnesses at the tribunal, testified that she was arrested on charges of
espionage, promoting Western values, and immorality. She said she was severely
tortured in prison by Taliban fighters. “They wanted to stone me to death,” she
said. “I was tortured so much that I thought of taking my own life.”
Another prosecutor, Mohib Mudassir, said the Taliban enforce
repression of women and other marginalized groups through religious decrees and
ministerial orders. He said their goal is “the total erasure of women from
public life.”
“The Taliban have violated many international conventions
Afghanistan had signed,” Mudassir said. “They have deliberately and
systematically excluded women and girls from all areas of social, educational,
and economic life.”
The tribunal was organized to seek justice for women victims
in Afghanistan, provide a platform for survivors to share their testimonies,
and push for accountability at the international level.
