Witness 1 In-person Testimony

Hello, good afternoon everyone. I, Zarmina Paryani, am one of the women protesting against the terrorist and gender apartheid regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Today, I speak here as a witness to a crime that the repressive, fascist, and terrorist Taliban regime still carries out in Afghanistan.

Before Afghanistan surrendered, I worked as a midwife in a hospital. I was an ordinary woman from Afghan society, living a simple, everyday life and working daily. However, after the Taliban arrived in Afghanistan, even though the hospital where I worked had not closed, because I was a woman, I needed a male guardian (mahram) with me to leave the house.

In my family, we are seven sisters and one brother, but our brother was not in Afghanistan. Only our father was at home. Now, with which of us was my father supposed to go to work or anywhere else? He was old and frail, and this was practically impossible for him.

Days, when I wanted to go to my workplace, I stood for hours on the corner of the street. I wore a hijab, but without a mahram, no taxi was allowed to take us, even to our workplace. This was because drivers had been told they were forbidden to transport women without a mahram.

These rules became stricter and more numerous day by day. I decided to go out into the street and protest, not as a social or human rights activist, but simply as a woman, because these laws were unacceptable to me.

Imagine that all of you here today chose the clothes you put on this very morning. Now, imagine a woman inside Afghanistan whose clothing type and color the Taliban regime must determine; a woman who faces beating, humiliation, and imprisonment because of her attire, and whom the Taliban even hold her father, brother, or husband responsible for repressing.

When we were in Afghanistan, if a woman left the house without a mahram and without a black burqa, they would arrest her and say that the men of her family must also be tortured. Every time we went out, the men of the family looked anxiously at our clothes to ensure no problems would arise.

My sisters and I—one of whom was a student and another a civil activist and athlete—went to the streets and protested for about five months. I protested based on my own experience and to oppose the mandatory hijab and the obligation of having a male mahram, not just for myself, but for all women. What happens to the women whose family men (the mahram or breadwinner) were killed by the Taliban?

After five months of protesting, the Taliban began to suppress the civil protests. We were arrested on January 19, 2022. I have the experience of being imprisoned twice, along with four of my sisters. The first time, on January 19, 2022, the Taliban arrested us late at night from our house in Parwan Square, Kabul. I was detained with three of my sisters, one of whom was 16 years old, and we were imprisoned for 27 days in Directorate 90.

The second time, on Thursday, May 12, 2022, they arrested me again with two of my sisters, one of whom was 14 years old. Initially, we were in the Nangarhar district for a few hours, and then they transferred us to the Nangarhar Intelligence Directorate. A man named Dr. Bashir was in charge there. After a while, because we lacked a male mahram and were not allowed to travel, they transferred us back to Directorate 40, where I was imprisoned for another ten days with my two sisters.

I want to talk about the night of January 19th, the night the Taliban first raided our house. We four sisters were at home. Since there were no facilities outside to speak with and meet the protesting girls and civil activists, we used our house for meetings, coordination, and protests. One of our friends had been arrested earlier. When the Taliban detain someone, they torture them to reveal others. That process led them to find our house.

When they knocked on the door, we immediately realized it was the Taliban because no one else would come to our house at that time of night. A few moments later, violent, continuous blows and kicks landed on the door. Every blow to the door felt like it struck our bodies and souls. We turned off the lights for a few minutes and sat motionless, hoping they might leave. But when they broke the door with force and tools, we closed our bedroom door. At that moment, we started screaming and calling for help. A famous university called “Kardan University” is located near our house. We screamed and yelled in every direction, but no one heard our voices. The door was breaking, and we had no hope of rescue. Finally, the door was broken.

We heard the voices of men inside the hallway and did not know what we should do. The days we protested in the streets, I was not afraid of the Taliban shooting because we were in a crowd. But I never imagined that a group of armed Taliban would come to our house in the middle of the night. That night had come, and we were powerless.

When my eye caught one of those Taliban, I felt like I was looking at a savage animal. In that instant, I only wanted to end my life. The only way I could think of was to jump from the apartment. I threw myself down, but my sister grabbed me; my clothes were torn, and despite that, I fell to the ground. A man with a gun came over my head and said, “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.” I was shocked that I was still alive even though I had thrown myself down. Even that night, death did not shelter us.

After that, they took us back to my sisters’ room. Along the way, they beat me with the butt of a rifle. When I entered the room, I saw them hitting my sisters too. In those moments, one of my sisters took a short video and sent it to a journalist friend. That video was what saved us. By the time we reached the prison, that video had been published on all pages. Perhaps that publication saved us from being killed.

During our transfer to prison, we were not even allowed to put on clothes. They addressed us with demeaning words: “You are wicked women and prostitutes, why are you looking for hijab?”. When they arrested us, the intersections and routes around the activists’ houses were full of tanks and military equipment. They blindfolded us and took us toward the prison. When we arrived at the prison (Directorate 90 Intelligence), we had to climb an iron staircase. One of the Taliban had a handkerchief in his hand, and they gave us a piece of it and were dragging us like animals. They took my sister to solitary confinement, and I was placed in a cell with my two other sisters. The prison atmosphere was full of fear, and the air was very cold. No female police force was present. We sisters clung to each other to warm up a little, but the cold air did not allow it.

After a while, we heard the voice of my sister who had taken the video, and her torture was continuing. Describing what she went through is impossible for me with words. They were trying to unlock her phone, extract a confession, and torture her severely. They believed women must follow a primitive and tribal system and that we were being supported from outside the country to protest.

When we protested in the street, we always hid our names and faces so no one would recognize us. But from inside my sister’s phone, they realized we were among the protesters and demanded she introduce the other protesters.

At three o’clock that night, it was my turn for interrogation. They took me to the interrogation room; all the interrogators were Taliban, they both detained, investigated, and tortured. They found the videos they had of my protests, distributed them in chat groups, and also took a forced confession video from me. Their goal was to portray us as wicked women so they could later eliminate us.

That night, they took confession videos and naked photos of me. When I jumped down from the building, I did not have my mobile phones with me, nor did I have a mobile phone in prison. They played one of the voices from inside the chat group for me; a Mullah had said that these women must be killed in a way that serves as a lesson for others so that no prostitute dares to rise against the Islamic government. They told us they would stone us.

I was in that prison for 27 days, and I was interrogated every day. In all the interrogations, they tried to force us to name the other protesting women and the women who were supporting us from abroad. In the male prison, we sensed the beheadings, lashings, torture, and beatings of the men. Every time they spoke to me, they told us to turn our faces and did not speak facing us, and we thought they would shoot us from behind at any moment. Every day and night, we heard the sound of torture and beatings of the other prisoners (men and women).

They did not take injured prisoners to the hospital. One of the prosecutors, with the pseudonym Qari Abubakar, came out one day with his hands and clothes full of blood and said, “We have an injured person here…” They did not take the injured to the hospital because they thought they would be exposed. One day, they said, “Take this person’s dead body so the corpse does not smell”. Many were killed inside the prison. They tried to psychologically harm us and used the experiences they themselves had seen in prisons against us. They took forced confessions from us and said that if we did not confess as they instructed, they would torture us severely.

One night, a tall man entered the room, covering his head and face. He started beating me and also had a large knife with him. We thought he would slit our throats at any moment.

Now, it has been three years since I came to a safe country. But the fear and horror of the attack on our house, the breaking of the door, and the torture of the prisoners are still ringing in our ears. Our mental state is not good; every day, I live with the moments of torture, killing, bruised bodies, and women who were raped.

Suhail Shaheen and Zabihullah Mujahid, two political figures and Taliban spokesmen, denied our imprisonment and claimed we were hiding ourselves to create asylum cases. After arriving in a safe country, we continued our protests. In August 2023, we set up a protest tent in Cologne, Germany, to advocate for the recognition of gender apartheid. We launched a hunger strike from September 1st to September 12th. We set up protest tents in more than ten German cities for the recognition of gender apartheid.

We are very sorry that today the world is cooperating with this terrorist group. I could never remain silent against the torture and oppression of the Taliban. Even after we were released, they confiscated our passports and banned us from leaving the country so we could not go abroad and raise our voices. They told us that if we protested again or conducted interviews with the media, our heads would be severed and placed on our chests.

Today, I am here to say that as long as terrorists rule in Afghanistan, this oppression and despotism will continue. The Taliban have suppressed civil protests with knives, guns, and beatings. If you live in a safe country and have the ability to raise your voice, please raise your voice for women and the oppressed. I hope no other woman has to experience what happened to me. I hope this meeting can amplify the voices of women and hold the Taliban accountable. The Taliban have no law; they only have force and guns and say, “We waged Jihad,” and they do whatever they please.

There were no health services in the prison. Even one of my sisters, who was on her period and in severe pain, was crying out. I begged them to give her even a simple pill, but they gave her nothing. A Taliban member told me, “This is not a hospital; this is a prison”. Other women were also in very poor health. They took me to them a few times to check on their condition, but they were ready to witness people’s deaths and did not take anyone to the hospital.

Question from the Judicial Panel: You said you were initially arrested by Nangarhar provincial forces and were in Nangarhar prison, and then transferred to Kabul? Why did the Nangarhar forces arrest you, and why did they transfer you to Kabul?

Answer: When we were released in February, as I mentioned before, our passports had not yet been returned to us. During this time, the issue of our imprisonment had been widely covered by the media, and human rights organizations were trying to help us leave Afghanistan. Eventually, we got our passports back, and I, along with two of my sisters, planned to leave the country via the Torkham route, but we were arrested again. We were told, “You are banned from leaving the country; how did you get passports again and try to leave?”. They tried their best to prevent us from leaving Afghanistan.

They took us to the Nangarhar district and kept us there for about two hours. No female police were present there, and I said I would not stay there, because if I did, I would surely be raped. We made a lot of noise, and eventually, they took us to the Intelligence Directorate under the leadership of Dr. Bashir. They did not find anything against me on my mobile phone there. Then, they transferred us, along with five other Taliban, to Directorate 40 Intelligence in Kabul, led by Qari Abdullah. On August 15, 2022, we managed to leave Afghanistan through illegal means, wearing burqas.