Afghan women are being shipped into neighbouring countries in coffins and used as sex slaves, according to a former judge.
Najla Ayoubi – who lives in the US after ‘fleeing for my life’ from the Taliban – said she has heard horrific examples of violence against women since the militants took control of her homeland on Sunday.
She said one woman yesterday was ‘put on fire because she was accused of bad cooking for Taliban fighters’ in the north of the country.
Other young women are being forced into marriage and sexually abused.
The lawyer told Sky News: ‘They are forcing people to give them food and cook them food.
‘Also there are so many young women…in the past few weeks being shipped into neighbouring countries in coffins to be used as sex slaves.
‘They also force families to marry their young daughters to Taliban fighters. I don’t see where is the promise that they think women should be going to work, when we are seeing all of these atrocities.’
The Taliban have said they will respect women’s rights and allow them to work and be educated.
But the claims have been met with deep skepticism, particularly by those who remember life under the brutal form of Sharia law they previously imposed.
Ms Ayoubi was born in Afghanistan and educated before the Taliban’s rise in the early 1990s – a ‘nightmare’ she remembers all too well.
She was the first female judge in her home province before the militants seized control, but overnight she went from being in a ‘powerful position’ to ‘nothing in society’.
Ayoubi said she ‘sat at home for five years’ and had to be accompanied by her neighbour’s four-year-old boy to do a grocery shop, showing he had more value than her because she was a woman.
The human rights activist played a large part in the constitution making process of Afghanistan when the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
But extremists threatened to target her and in 2015, she sough asylum in the US.
Now chief of coalition and global programmes at Every Woman Treaty, which campaigns to end violence against women, Ayoubi watched in horror as the Taliban once again took over the country.
She said there was ‘no way to believe’ assurances that the Taliban wanted to form inclusive government, saying she knew of one female TV anchor who was told to go home.
She said many women’s activists are now hiding and in fear of their lives and their loved ones lives, but there is ‘no way out of the situation’.
The UK government has said it will take 20,000 Afghan refugees over the next five years, prioritising women and children.
But there are still no details of when the scheme will open and what safe and legal routes will be available to those granted asylum.
The situation is looking increasingly desperate as more reports emerge of human rights atrocities, particularly against women.
Just days ago a woman was said to have been gunned down in the street for not wearing a burka.
Some women are so desperate they were filmed trying to pass their babies over barbed wire at Kabul airport, where foreign troops are evacuating their citizens and local allies.
The airport is only way out of the country – but Taliban promises of ‘safe passage’ have been undermined by reports of militants being women and children with whips and sticks.
Boris Johnson today admitted the situation was ‘precarious’ but said it was getting ‘slightly better’, with around 2,000 people evacuated in the last two days.
He said: ‘I can tell you that the whole of the Government has been working virtually around the clock to do what we can to sort it out, to deal with a situation that has been long in gestation and to make sure we get as many people back as possible.’
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