The Guardian has obtained video evidence of an Afghan female human rights activist being gang-raped and tortured by gunmen in a Taliban prison.
There have been increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls in detention in Afghanistan, but this video is thought to be the first direct evidence that these crimes are taking place.
The activist said the mobile phone footage was later sent to him, threatening that it would be shared with a wider audience if he continued to speak out against the Taliban regime.
In the video footage seen by The Guardian, the young woman is asked to take off her clothes and is then repeatedly raped by two men.
In the video, recorded on a phone by one of the gunmen, a woman tries to cover her face with her hands. When one of the men hesitates while giving her orders, he pushes her away roughly.
At one point she is told, “You’ve been screwed by Americans for years, and now it’s our turn.”
The woman said she was arrested for participating in a protest against the Taliban and raped while in custody in a Taliban prison. She has since fled Afghanistan. She said she was sent the video after speaking out against the Taliban in exile and was told that if she continued to criticise the regime, it would be sent to her family and posted on social media.
He said he was told, “If you continue to say anything bad against the Islamic Emirate, we will publish your video.”
She believes the attack was deliberately recorded to silence and shame her. The person filming the attack caught her standing naked with her face visible and could be identified during the attacks.
Last week, The Guardian published testimonies from young girls and women who said they were sexually assaulted and beaten after being detained under Afghanistan’s strict hijab laws.
In one case, the body of a woman detained by Taliban militants was allegedly found in a canal several weeks later, with a source close to her family saying she had been sexually abused before her death.
The UN special rapporteur for Afghanistan reported that women are thought to have been subjected to sexual violence in detention.
Since coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban has imposed what human rights groups call “gender discrimination” on Afghanistan’s 14 million women and girls, excluding them from nearly every aspect of public life. Women and girls are prevented from attending secondary school, barred from almost all forms of paid employment, barred from walking in public parks, going to gyms or beauty salons, and told to follow a strict dress code.
The Taliban also announced that they would reintroduce the practice of publicly flogging and stoning women caught in adultery.
The Guardian and Rukhshana Media spoke to scores of female protesters and activists who claimed they were tortured and beaten after being arrested for calling for women’s rights.
Zarife Yaqubi, 30, said she spent 41 days in prison in November 2022 after her attempt to organize a movement for Afghan women.
“They hit some parts of my body with cables and gave me electric shocks so that I wouldn’t be able to appear in front of the camera tomorrow,” said the woman, adding that she was tortured to confess that she had taken money from foreigners to protest against the Taliban.
Parwana Nejarabi, 23, said she was beaten and shocked after being detained by Taliban forces while protesting for women’s rights in early 2022. She said she spent a month in solitary confinement and was shown a letter ordering her to be stoned to death. “I could hear them saying, ‘He must be killed,’” she said. She was released after a confession was forced and she fled Afghanistan to live in exile.
Despite the huge risks to their safety, women in Afghanistan are still protesting and criticising the Taliban regime. Rukhshana Media reported that women and girls have protested at least 221 times in the past two years.
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Taliban spokesman Zabhullah Mujahid denied allegations of widespread sexual assault on women in prisons.
The Taliban continues to operate with “complete impunity for abuses, especially behind prison walls,” said Heather Barr, deputy director of the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
“The Taliban understands how stigmatizing the issue of sexual violence in Afghanistan is and how incredibly difficult — and often impossible — it is for survivors of sexual violence to come forward and tell their stories, sometimes even to their own families, because it carries the risk of shame and potentially ‘honor’ violence,” Barr said.
Richard Bennett, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, said: “I am particularly concerned by reports of torture and ill-treatment in Afghanistan, including allegations of sexual violence against women in detention. We continue to investigate these reports and establish the facts.”
Earlier this week, Taliban officials attended a special meeting on Afghanistan organized by the UN in Doha to discuss the country’s future. No Afghan women were present at the meeting and women’s rights were not on the agenda.