controversial areas are.34 Some moderate religious figures had recently criticised the Taliban’s aforementioned Morality Law, which bans women and girls' from speaking outside the home. Previously, in 2023, the Taliban’s MVV assigned a team of missionaries in all the country’s 24 provinces to preach and enforce the regime’s code and quote moral verdicts.35 Elements of the moral code included, among other things, male attendance at congregational prayers, both day and evening, closure of businesses at prayer time, holding quranic recitation instead of music and dance at weddings, refraining from listening to music, approved beard length and hair styles for men, dress codes for both men and women, preventing women movement outside of home without a male chaperone or Mahram.36 In a nutshell, the Taliban is expanding its ferocious grip to extinguish further the rights to freedom of expression and beliefs. 4. Taliban’s War against HRDs and the Lack of Protection Mechanisms Although the situation for HRDs had been deteriorating before August 2021, the Taliban’s rise to power dealt a dramatic blow to human rights efforts. It foreshadowed a return to the regime’s dark era of the mid-90s, when many segments of the society were stripped of their fundamental rights. Since mid-2021, the Taliban fighters have continually engaged in an unrelenting reprisal campaign against HRDs, civil society, and critical voices, mainly those from ethnic and religious minorities.37 Media workers were 34 Amu TV, Sharif Amiri, ‘Taliban’s Ban on Religious Debates Triggers Outcry Among Clerics’, 21 September, 2024, https://shorturl.at/nxesD Amu TV, ‘Review of Taliban’s Morality Police 35 (Persian)’, 23 August, 2024, https://shorturl.at/hYnx4 Freedom House, ‘Afghanistan: Political and 36 Civil Liberties,’, 2023, https://rb.gy/j1gx3a Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan., 37 ‘Afghanistan: Events of 2023’, 2023. https://shorturl. regularly targeted for their investigative or independent reporting, and for covering the Taliban’s abuses. The situation for WHRDs became particularly dire due to the Taliban’s misogynistic mentality in the broader sense. Many women protesters who have put their lives on the line to hold out against the regime’s gender-based discriminatory conducts and policies have faced disproportionate harsh responses. Women and girls faced systematic repression, among which intimidation, arrest, and physical violence, as well as reprisal against their family members, when staging peaceful protests to demand the upholding of their fundamental rights, including the right to education and employment. Many WHRDs and journalists have been arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned. Some key cases include Nida Parwani and Zhulia Parsi, the two WHRDs were arrested on 19 and 27 September, 2023, together with members of their family. Prominent HRDs Matiuallah Wesa, Parisa Azada Mubariz, and education rights activist Nargis Sadat have been among many activists who spent weeks or months in the Taliban’s prison, while several other activists and journalists remain still imprisoned.38 Those have been arrested “suffered torture and other ill-treatment, including sexual abuse,” according to UN reports.39 This climate of fear and repression against HRDs have forced them to flee the country or go into hiding to avoid reprisal. Those who remain inside Afghanistan face immense gaps in physical and legal protection, as well as psycho-social risks and a lack of financial resources. This isolation hinders their fight for human rights and creates a significant void in the at/4HRTe Ibid. 38 39 Amnesty International, ‘Afghanistan 2023’, 2023, https://shorturl.at/qEAgR 15