Afghan woman, 22, ‘faces death by stoning for secretly teaching girls taekwondo’
A young woman who secretly trained girls in taekwondo in Afghanistan may be stoned to death, activists fear.
Khadija Ahmadzada, 22, was arrested on January 10 in Herat for defying the Taliban’s ban on women playing sport.
Authorities discovered she was teaching students the martial art in a hidden courtyard at her home.
Her detention has prompted fears from activists that she has already been sentenced to death for the illicit activity.
The campaigners are desperately trying to raise awareness of the Taliban crackdown in hopes her killing can be averted.
British-Afghan activist Shabnam Nasimi said on Instagram: ‘She refused to accept that being female is a crime.
‘That quiet act of defiance has come at a price, when the Taliban’s morality police out, witnesses said they raided her home and detained her.
‘There are rumours from people around Khadija that the court has ruled on an extreme death sentence – stoning – for the crime of practicing and playing sport.
‘For anyone who doesn’t know what stoning is, it’s when stones are thrown at a living human being until they bleed, collapse and die.’
Nasimi added that witnesses claim Ahmadzada and her father were dragged out of their home before being held for more than a week.
She said that Ahmadzada’s family have reportedly heard nothing from the 22-year-old for longer than a week.
The activist called on her followers to ‘draw attention to ‘flood the internet’ with Ahmadzada’s name in an effort to ‘save her life’.
Nasimi said: ‘When the international spotlight lands on a regime like this, they hesitate.
‘Not because they grow a conscience, but because they fear consequences, pressure, exposure and intervention.
‘If Khadija becomes famous enough, they may back off.’
An entire generation of Afghan women and girls lost their freedom when the Taliban took control of the country in 2021.
Girls have been turned away from school, forced to veil their face and body at all times in public, are not allowed to look at men they aren’t related or married to, or even be seen in their own homes from neighbouring properties.
Even the sound of women singing or simply speaking to and hearing each other has been banned, as part of the Taliban’s ‘vice prevention strategy’.
And female beggars pleading for money or food in the streets say they have been raped, beaten or made to carry out forced labour by Taliban officials.
A UN report in July said the ministry for the ‘propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice’ was contributing to a climate of fear and intimidation among Afghans, especially women and girls.
In 2022, Unicef worker Sam Mort called the sweeping oppression of women and girls ‘the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world’.
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