Adela Azin Nazari
On November 2022, Zarifa Yaqoubi, Masoumah Hossaini, Zainab Rezaei, Ozra Hossaini and a number of other women went to a hotel in Kabul’s 18th Dashtbarchi district where they announced the formation of the “Afghanistan Women’s Movement for Equality”.
The forces of the Taliban terrorist group attack at the end of the meeting announcing the existence of the Afghan women’s movement. The forces of this group arrest Zarifa Yaqoubi and three male journalists who participated in this meeting. After handcuffing Ms. Yaqoubi, four female soldiers take her away in a separate car. One of those four soldiers put a black map on Ms. Yaqoubi’s head and took her to the Taliban intelligence Agency. After that, she was transferred to the Directorate 40 and was imprisoned for 41 days.
The Afghanistan women’s movement for equality, led by Zarifa Yaqoubi, has continuously worked against the anti-women policies of the Taliban. Ms. Yaqoubi, after being released from the Taliban prison, went to Pakistan and from there became a refugee in Canada. When she was in Pakistan, she tried to advocate for women’s rights; An effort that also continues in Canada.
Ms. Yaqoubi held many protest programs in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, against the denial of women’s rights in Afghanistan. On 13 July 2024, with a number of Afghan and Iranian women’s rights activists, she went to the Canada Parliament and demanded the formalization of gender apartheid in Afghanistan. Ms. Jolly also emphasized that Canada supports all measures for a full investigation into any type of sexual abuse of Afghan women and girls, including the ongoing investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court into the situation in Afghanistan. She added: “The court’s prosecutor’s office has confirmed that the systematic oppression of women and girls in Afghanistan by the Taliban is an example of the crimes defined in the Rome Statute.”
In the Rome Statute, which is the basis for the establishment of the International Criminal Court, sexual harassment is considered a crime against humanity.
In the Canadian Parliament, Ms. Yaqoubi revealed the horrific crimes that are being committed against women, Shia and Hazara prisoners in the Taliban prison. In a meeting in the Canadian Parliament, she said: “After the takeover of the barbaric Taliban group, I protested on the Kabul streets for the sake of justice; But I was arrested by this group for three reasons: being a woman, being a Shia, and being a Hazara.” Ms. Yaqoubi said in the Canadian Parliament that the Taliban fighters subjected her to mental and physical torture. “The negative effects of those tortures still hurt my soul and I still take medicine to be able to forget those days.”
Humiliation and religious insult, pulling her hair, giving electric shocks and kicking, keeping her in the morgue, not allowing her to visit her family, and not having access to health equipment and medicine, are some of the tortures that Ms. Yaqoubi experienced in the Taliban prison. But she adds that while she was in prison, she heard the voices of women begging the Taliban not to take off their clothes and rape them.
In more than three years of Taliban rule over Afghanistan, there have been many reports of Taliban group assault on female prisoners, especially protesters, in the media.
For the first time, the Silk Way Weekly has published the bitter memories of Zarifa Yaqoubi from the Taliban prison on 7 August 2023, in a file called “Strange Exiles”. In this case, along with Mrs. Yaqoubi, the memories of other female protesters have also been published.
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