800 women held in prisons in Afghanistan

Kabul [Afghanistan]: As the Taliban’s atrocities on women in Afghanistan continue in various forms, including suppression of their basic rights, a TOLOnews report has highlighted how out of around 19000 people who are currently held under prisons in Afghanistan, at least 800 are women. 

According to the deputy head of the Office of the Prison Administration, there are currently about 19,000 inmates serving varying sentences in prisons throughout Afghanistan. 
There are no private, unofficial jails in the nation, according to Habibullah Badar, who made this claim in an interview with RTA, the national TV network of the nation. 

Additionally, he refuted accusations that inmates were subjected to “torture” in the jail, asserting that there is no torture or other forms of abuse of inmates, according to TOLOnews. 

“There are a total of 19,000 detainees in various provinces and districts of the country. Many of them are under investigation. 800 of them are women,” said the deputy head of the Prison Administration. 

A few military and political experts have called on the Taliban to start providing the captives with educational instruction in the meantime. 
“Education is a very important issue for the detainees. The detainees should also be provided with various skills,” a political analyst, Zahorullah Zahir said, according to TOLOnews. 

Despite the Taliban’s initial promise to take a moderate approach towards women’s rights after it seized power in August 2021, the ban on higher education is just one of many steps that the armed group has taken to further segregate the country and limit women’s role in society. 

In the immediate aftermath of August 2021, the Taliban banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and imposed strict rules requiring women to wear hijabs and to travel only with a male chaperone. 

They closed down beauty salons and blocked women from working with domestic and international non-governmental aid groups, sparking international outrage on the matter.