Afghan Refugees In Delhi Protest For Safety Of Women Under Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan

Afghan Women Delhi Protest: Hundreds joined in and showed their support for the ones who are stuck under the control of the militia group Taliban. Afghan refugees expressed concerns about their families and spoke about the situation there.

Sadaf, who is one of the protestors at Delhi told NDTV, "I am here to raise my voice for the Afghan women who are in need. Their voices have been taken away by the Taliban. Whatever promises are made by the Taliban are all false. They are not allowed to work, not allowed to step out of the house without a man escorting them, they are kept as sex slaves, married forcibly. The children and women are the most vulnerable."

She further added, "I feel lucky and grateful that India has given us shelter and a place to stay. My relatives are stuck in Afghanistan. So many have been displaced."

The protest also included refugees from Afghanistan who have their families stuck in the cities taken over by the Islamic extremist group the Taliban. One such refugee living in Delhi named, Zara, said that her family is stuck in the capital city of Kabul. She added that new Taliban movements happen every day. She also said that houses were being searched and the people who work with foreign countries were being killed. She also alleged that the Taliban is forcibly marrying off women from families with members who worked with the US.

An Afghan refugee told SheThePeople that the Taliban is actively carrying out search operations for people who worked with US or any other international offices. The woman who chose to stay anonymous said that the Taliban are also seizing documents of such people. Talking about her friend who used to work at an Embassy, the woman said, "She was terrified thinking about what the Taliban will do to her if they found her papers."

Journalist, Nayanima Basu also shared with us what she saw at the Kabul airport. She said that when she and one other journalist reached Kabul airport to board on August 16, they saw that the Taliban had captured it. "But to our complete astonishment we saw that the airport had been taken over by the Taliban and they were there with armoured vehicles, shooting incessantly from the machine guns in the air and sometimes even at the crowd that had gathered in huge numbers, in order to leave the country." Read her story here.

Many women journalists and activists have talked about the dread looming on people's mind due to the Taliban recapture.

“everyone is in their own homes and women are rarely seen in the city because all women are terrified," an activist Zamina Kakar told us earlier this week.

Afghanistan witnessed at least two women protests in their capital city which also had Delhi graduate Crystal Bayat. In her interview with The Print, she said that even though she is reaching out to hundreds of women, only a handful of them turn up on the protest day.

Many countries including India have opened their borders for the refugees coming from Afghanistan and are issuing them a special visa called 'e-Emergency X-Misc Visa'.