More than 300 women, minor girls forced into marriage, gang-raped by Taliban in 10 days: Malisha Heena Khan

NEW DELHI: India-based model and actress Malisha Heena Khan who is currently in Delhi meeting government officials in an attempt to get her family members out of Afghanistan, alleged on Twitter than more than 300 women and girls, many of them minors were forced into marriage and gang-raped by the Taliban in the last ten days alone.

Malisha took to Twitter and said:

The Taliban were going door to door and house to house searching for women and young girls, some of them even minors and forcibly marrying them, Malisha alleged in another tweet.

“Some of the girls are as young as 14 or 15 years of age. They are being forcibly kidnapped and married by the Taliban. But it’s just not marriage. The marriage is just a farce. They are forced to have sex with several men each day, at times even 10 men, causing grave physical injury and harm to their person, not to forget the mental trauma that each youth has to bear. Many girls even commit suicide. This is the truth of the Taliban,” Malisha Heena Khan told this reporter.

Meanwhile, admitting that women were not safe in the present Taliban regime, the outfit directed Afghan women to stay indoors and working women should work from home, news agency ANI reported.

Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said at a news conference on Tuesday that women should not go to work for their own safety, undermining the group’s efforts to convince international observers that the group would be more tolerant towards women than when they were last in power, reported CNN.

As per Mujahid, the measure was necessary because the Taliban “keep changing and are not trained.”

When last in power between 1996 and 2001 the group banned women from the workplace, stopped them from leaving the home unaccompanied and forced them to cover their entire bodies.

The direction came after the World Bank halted funding in Afghanistan, citing concerns about the safety of women, and within hours of the UN calling for a “transparent and prompt investigation” into reports of human rights abuses since the Taliban takeover, dealing another blow to an economy that relies heavily on foreign aid, reported CNN.

Meanwhile, the Taliban promised its new era will be more moderate, but Taliban leaders have refused to guarantee women’s rights will not be stripped back and many have already faced violence.

with inputs from ANI