U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Afghanistan Karen Decker has urged the Taliban fundamentalist movement to immediately release the five human rights activists, one of them a well-known women’s rights advocate, detained Thursday in the capital, Kabul.
«The U.S. will never stop supporting the rights of women to live, work and assemble in peace,» Decker tweeted.
Activist Zarifa Yaqobi was detained along with fellow activists in the west of the city as they attempted to organize a group known as the Movement for Afghan Women.
These five people remain under arrest and the UN has requested information from the authorities, according to a spokesman for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jeremy Laurence.
In addition, the officers held the other women who had attended the event for about an hour in the hall itself. During this time, they allegedly conducted searches and checked the phones of the attendees, according to information released by the United Nations.
Sources quoted by the Jaama Press agency said the Taliban forces stormed the hall, located in a Hazara-majority neighborhood in western Kabul, at gunpoint. Both Hazaras and women have historically been marginalized in Afghanistan, especially with the Taliban in power.
Regular Taliban spokesman and the regime’s deputy information minister, Zabiullah Mujahid, said Saturday that he was unaware of Yaqobi’s arrest.
