[Today's Prayer] Women arrested under Afghanistan's 'Anti-Begging Law' testify to beatings and sexual assault
There have been testimonies that Afghan women arrested under the 'Anti-Begging Law' enacted by the Taliban were sexually assaulted and beaten.
According to the Guardian and Zan Times on the 2nd, Afghan women arrested while begging revealed that they had suffered sexual assault while in custody. They said that they had been subjected to sexual abuse, beatings, torture, forced labor, and even witnessed child abuse.
In May, the Taliban enacted the so-called 'Anti-Begging Law', prohibiting 'healthy people who can earn a living' from begging on the streets. According to this law, those who force children and the disabled to beg or continue to beg while receiving support are subject to detention. A committee was established to manage and classify beggars, and biometric data collection, including fingerprints, has become possible. It is reported that more than 50,000 people have already been arrested for violating the law in the capital city of Kabul alone.
But the law is working to stifle Afghan women who are banned from economic activity. A woman (32), a mother of three, was arrested for begging for food after her husband went missing. “A Taliban vehicle stopped and forced me to get in. I spent three days and nights in the prison, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry for the male staff there,” she said. She was beaten unconscious and sexually assaulted when she refused to be fingerprinted. “I wanted to end my life many times, but I stayed because of my children,” she said.
Another woman was detained for 15 days after begging with her daughter after being abandoned by her husband. “They even brought children who shined shoes on the street to the detention center. They beat the women and made them clean and wash the dishes, asking, ‘Why don’t you get married?’” she said. The woman also testified that she and other women were sexually assaulted while in detention.
The Zan Times reported that “there have been several reports of women arrested under the anti-begging law being sexually assaulted and tortured. Those who were imprisoned claimed that children were beaten to death,” he said. A woman (30) who was dragged away by her hair while begging said that there were more than 500 women and children in the prison where she was detained, and that some children fainted from hunger.
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After the Taliban took power again in 2021, they restricted women’s social activities on a extreme level. Women were only allowed primary education and were virtually banned from employment in the private and public sectors. Women were also prohibited from traveling without a male guardian or going to parks or gyms. Last year, a report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) pointed out that depression and suicide were prominent among Afghan teenage women, and that mental health damage was serious.
According to World Bank data, the labor force participation rate (the percentage of the population aged 15 or older participating in economic activity) in Afghanistan in 2023 was only 4.8%. The figure, which had been around 15-20% since the 1990s, fell to around 5% after the Taliban regained power in 2021. The male labor force participation rate in 2023 was 69.1%.
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Source: Nate News
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7)
As the Taliban enacted the 'Anti-Begging Law', we hear the devastating news that Afghan women and children who lost their husbands and fathers were abused and sexually assaulted by the Taliban while begging for a living.
Let the souls of Afghanistan realize that the 'anti-begging law', which was created to prohibit healthy people who can solve their daily meals from begging on the streets, is in fact an evil law targeting women who are prohibited from employment and children who cannot work.
Good God, do not ignore the fact that the weak have been bound and enslaved by various evil Islamic laws since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, but extend your mighty hand and let the women and children of Afghanistan flee to the Lord who is like a mountain of refuge.
Let the Afghan and Persian churches that you have given revival work together with the global church to spread the gospel and help the souls of Afghanistan make a living, and let the kingdom of God, who strengthens the weak and enriches the poor in Afghanistan, come more quickly than anything else through the serving of the church.
Therefore, let all of Persia and the nations know that the one who truly rules Afghanistan is Jehovah God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and let the Afghan people be filled with the joy of salvation and share this joy with the nations!
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