Women accused by the Taliban of begging reported being beaten and raped in prisons

Afghan women arrested for begging under the Talibanʼs new law have spoken of brutal physical, psychological and sexual abuse in prisons.

This is reported by The Guardian.

In May 2024, the Taliban passed a law against begging. Now "healthy people" are not allowed to be poor if they can pay for one dayʼs food. A special commission registers and classifies beggars under the categories of "professional", "needy" and "organized". Officials say that in Kabul alone, they have already collected data on almost 60 000 such people.

In recent months, in particular, many women have been detained on the streets. They claim that they begged for money on the street because they could not find paid work. After coming to power in 2021, the Taliban banned women from working in most industries. This has led to an increase in poverty in Afghanistan.

Zahra [name changed for security reasons], a 32-year-old mother of three, moved to Kabul to beg after her husband, a soldier in the former governmentʼs national army, disappeared following the installation of the Taliban regime.

The woman spent three days in prison after being detained. She was forced to cook, clean, and wash the clothes of the men who worked there. Then they wanted to capture Zahraʼs biometric data. When she resisted, she was beaten unconscious and raped, the victim says.

According to her, another woman was held captive for 15 days. There she was also forced to clean, humiliated and subjected to physical and sexual violence. Other victims spoke of brutal beatings of children that sometimes resulted in death.

Taliban law stipulates that if a beggar dies and has no relatives or the family refuses to collect the body, it is buried by local officials. Low-income people are entitled to financial assistance from the state, but none of the interlocutors of the media received any money.

• After seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban began to gradually suppress womenʼs rights. The Taliban banned women from studying at universities, ordered private universities not to admit them to entrance exams, banned women from working in non-governmental organizations, playing sports, visiting amusement parks, and driving without a hijab. The country also closed beauty salons for women, banned women from visiting the Band-e-Amir National Park, and women who were subjected to violence are sent to prisons. Subsequently, the Taliban forbade women to speak in public, and then to communicate with each other.

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