The Taliban’s religious police subject women to interrogation, ill-treatment and harassment when they do not wear the full veil in public spaces, women testify in Kabul. This police, which is attached to the Taliban Ministry of Vice and Virtue, seeks pretexts to arrest, insult or even beat up women in the street.
Wearing a brightly colored dress, a short skirt, jeans, but also taking a seat in the front seat of a taxi or moving around without being accompanied by a man are all reasons likely to annoy the Taliban fighters to the point that they brutalize women.
Nazanin, a student at the public university, says she was beaten by the Taliban because she was in the front passenger seat of a taxi in early May in Kabul. “I received two lashes in the back, she confides. I felt like my bones were being broken. My back felt numb.” Nazanin explains that his attackers picked up the taxi driver for the police station.
Virtue Patrols
Upon their return to power in August 2021, the Taliban disbanded the Ministry of Women’s Rights, replaced by the infamous Religious Police, which today patrols the city.