A female journalist testified at the People’s Tribunal for Afghan Women in Madrid, recounting her detention and mistreatment by Taliban forces. She said the Taliban blocked journalists’ advocacy gatherings, arrested reporters, and detained her at gunpoint.
The journalist, who lost her job after the Taliban’s return to power and the imposition of strict media restrictions, said Taliban forces raided her home without cause, threatened her, and beat her husband. She added that after months of hardship, she was forced to flee Afghanistan, but Taliban guards beat her and her son at the Pakistan border.
She told the tribunal that her husband remains in critical condition due to Taliban beatings and that her family continues to suffer from severe psychological trauma. “I have nightmares every night, imagining the Taliban attacking again,” she said, adding that such fear is shared by many Afghan women and female journalists.
The witness also described how the Taliban extract forced confessions from journalists and torture detainees, expressing frustration that “the voices of Afghan women are not being heard.”
Hamid Obaidi, head of the Afghan Media Support Organization, told Afghanistan International on the sidelines of the hearing that the Taliban have imposed at least 25 restrictions on the media over the past four years.
He said these documented human rights violations should be presented to international institutions, emphasising that the persecution of women journalists remains one of the central issues under review at the People’s Tribunal for Afghan Women.
