The Taliban takeover in August 2021 ended the career of Zholia Parsi as a Farsi language teacher in Kabul. The restrictions aimed at erasing women from public space, advising them to stay at home, also compelled her daughters to discontinue their education. She decided to defy the Taliban despite enormous risks and showed exceptional leadership by founding the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women (SMAW) and organising numerous protests in public spaces, at first with her friends then quickly rallying more women and communities to their cause, in Kabul and other provinces.
During these protests against gender apartheid, women protesters were greatly outnumbered by armed Taliban, who subjected them to verbal abuse, intimidation and at times direct attacks. Women were also arrested for protesting, during the protests and afterwards.
With the brutal repression of street protest, the SMAW started to coordinate indoor and online protests, and to engage in both domestic and international mobilisation, issuing statements and sending information of their daily lives abroad to shed light on the reality of life under the Taliban. The SMAW grew momentum in Kabul and other provinces, now counting 180 members and having mobilized communities to resist the Taliban’s policies and practices.
Zholia Parsi was arrested in the street by armed Taliban in September 2023, a bag put on her head and forced in a car, then detained along with her son. In a judicial system forcefully subjected to a repressive interpretation of Shari’a law, she was held in a detention center, without access to a lawyer and without family visits. She was subjected to torture and ill-treatment during three months before she was released.
Members of the SMAW have faced intimidation and been subjected to unlawful use of force, arbitrary arrests, and detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment. At least 8 members of the SMAW have been abducted and imprisoned since its establishment.
Forced to live in exile since her release, Zholia Parsi has continued her advocacy and to organise indoor protests in difference parts of Afghanistan.
The SMAW demands the end of gender apartheid and the reversal of the more than 50 edicts and decrees of the Taliban that are discriminatory against women; the immediate and unconditional release of persons detained or disappeared as a result of their human rights activities; accountability for gross human rights violations and that the international community does not recognise nor normalise relations with the Taliban.
