Adele Azin Nazari
Translated By Mohammad Sakhi Rezaie
The “Purple Saturdays Movement”, one of the most active Afghan women’s protest groups against the Taliban, was formed in Kabul after this group’s domination of Afghanistan with the slogan “right, justice and freedom”. The Purple Sundays Movement now includes large groups of protesting men and women who believe that the only way out of the current situation, especially for women, vulnerable ethnic groups and religious minorities in Afghanistan, is a targeted struggle with the necessary intellectual and organizational foundations in order to overthrow the Taliban regime and the Taliban thoughts.
Maryam Marouf Arvin, a journalist, human rights activist and one of the founders of the Purple Saturdays Movement, says that she and her 10 friends, including seven women and three men, started this movement to bring about a change in the prevailing situation of the Afghan society. She says: “We formed this movement in Paghman, Kabul, and at the beginning, our activities were more conventional in an official structure.” Ms. Arvin says that the name of the movement was chosen because of the fact that Saturdays are associated with new beginnings and purple is the color of hope; That is, the Purple Saturdays Movement is the beginning of a new leap of hope at the height of despair. This movement is one of the most systematic protest movements against the Taliban, which includes the Health and Sports Committee, the Committee for the Support of Ex-Servicemen, the Committee for Art and Culture, the Committee for Planning and Creating National Cohesion, the Umbrella Committee for the Protection of Vulnerable Ethnic Groups and Religious Minorities, and the Committee for Afghan Protesting Journalists and the committee of women in political leadership.
The Goals of the Movement
According to the members of the Purple Saturdays Movement, this protest group was created to support and defend the rights and freedoms of all sections of the society, especially women, religious minorities and vulnerable groups from the policies of the Taliban group. This movement is trying to plan and create national unity with intellectual coalition under the umbrella of common thought and goals in order to overthrow the “self-proclaimed government of the Taliban” in Afghanistan. The Purple Saturdays Movement strives to form a regional and global consensus against the Taliban group by defining the Taliban and terrorism as a common enemy for Afghanistan and the world. Another important demand of this movement is the formation of a legitimate, democratic and decentralized system and government as an alternative to the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Ms. Arvin says that the Purple Saturdays Movement considers it its responsibility to fight against national oppression, injustice, ethnic, sectarian, and linguistic prejudices and efforts to ensure social justice and equality among all ethnic groups living in the country. And finally, to raise awareness of the crime against humanity, especially the crime against women and the violation of the human rights of Afghan citizens by the Taliban, it works to clarify the intellectual nature of the Taliban from Sharia, Afghanism and Islamism that the Taliban wants to institutionalize them.
Member Categories
The Purple Saturdays Movement has been active in 12 provinces and its members are from different social categories. According to Ms. Arvin, educated women, women and girls who left university and school, and women who are illiterate, are members of this movement and fight to achieve their human rights. Currently, this movement is mostly active in Kabul, Balkh, Panjshir and Takhar and has few members in Ghazni, Parwan and Herat provinces.
How The Purple Saturdays Movement Works
The struggles of the Purple Saturdays Movement are peaceful, civil and political. At the beginning of its activity, this movement held street protests and later, due to the restrictions imposed by the Taliban, it limited its protest programs in closed places. From the beginning of its formation until now, the members of this movement have protested individually and collectively in the form of wall writing, launching hashtags on social pages, writing leaflets, issuing resolutions, publishing reports, articles, issuing calls and appearing in the media. The meeting of the members of this movement is mostly online and the members work individually from their homes and visit each other wearing burqa.
Threats
Ms. Arvin says that the members of the Purple Saturdays Movement have been threatened with rape, beheading, and the issuing of arrest warrants by the Taliban. According to him, until now, seven members of this movement have been arrested by the Taliban, four of which happened in Panjshir, and the protesters were released with the mediation of the elders of the region. However, the management of this movement has refused to mediate this issue because of the fact that the detainees will not be harmed. Nasrin Rezaei, a protester who has been working as the deputy of the Purple Mondays Movement since August 17, 2021 and has organized most of the protest programs in Kabul, has also experienced threats from the Taliban. She says that she was receiving messages from the Taliban that told her: “Can you tolerate being raped by continuing these actions [protest]? When you are imprisoned, these things are certain.” The Taliban had told her that if she was expelled from Afghanistan, they could threaten her family. In a protest march on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of Taliban rule in Kabul, in which Ms. Nasreen participated, the Taliban, in the first moments of the march, asked the protesters not to continue their protest. But the women continue chanting and marching, and after a few minutes, the Taliban forces stand in front of them and start shooting in the air, which disrupts the march and disperses the protesters. After a few moments, she and 11 other protesting women were arrested by the Taliban and kept in an area near the place of the march. Mrs. Nasreen says that the Taliban forces interrogated them for three hours and during this process, besides insulting them, they threatened them with death.
Darya – alias – another member of the Purple Saturdays Movement, who has been working as the person responsible for holding protests in Balkh since August 30, 2021, was arrested by the Taliban on 14 November, 2022. On this date, the Taliban, with the documents they had, surrounded her house in one of the northeastern provinces and transferred he and her brother to the police district. They spend five days in the police district of the Taliban, and then they are freed and returned home with the mediation of tribal elders and stay under house arrest. Although the Taliban wants to prevent their protest activities by monitoring the female protesters, these protesters are still trying to fight to declare their presence and achieve their human rights.
Achievements and Plans
In the last three years, female protestors in Afghanistan have launched extensive protests and other initiatives against the policies of the Taliban, which have had a wide impact on the global and regional levels and have caused no country to recognize the Taliban regime. By chanting the slogan “rights, justice and freedom”, the protestors and especially the Purple Saturdays Movement are not seeking their citizenship and civil rights and freedoms from the Taliban, but they are seeking to secure all the human and Islamic rights and freedoms of Afghan citizens, especially women, and ethnic groups and religious minorities groups vulnerable to the policies of the Taliban. In the beginning, this movement had the largest number of men on its side, and even now, men are standing in the ranks of these women’s campaigns and are fighting against Taliban terrorism, regardless of gender. This movement believes that “unless we share the pain, there will certainly not be a shared cure.” They fight for social justice and the end of national oppression and the provision of a legitimate, democratic and decentralized system and government, based on the votes of the people of the country; Because they believe that the Taliban are not changeable and flexible. These women are determined to continue their civil struggle until they are alive and to try to preserve it. They say that “Taliban is the common enemy of all of us and it is imperative to turn this common pain into a common cure.”
After the return of the Taliban to power and the approach of this group towards the citizens, many protest movements were formed in Afghanistan and outside of this country, to fight for the basic rights of the citizens, especially women and ethnic and religious groups; It is a long and difficult road that the movement still goes on.
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