Gay Men in Afghanistan Tortured by the Taliban Say ‘Tell the World We Exist’
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Gay men in Afghanistan are being tracked down and rounded up for torture by the Taliban and beg journalists to “let the world know we exist and we need help.”
In recent weeks, the Taliban has conducted house-to-house searches and forcefully detained activists.
“They brought rubber whips to tie my hands, laid me on my stomach, and beat my buttocks till I bled,” says Bilal, a gay man from Afghanistan.
Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint on a street in Kabul on December 17, 2021. (Photo by Mohd RASFAN / AFP) (Photo by MOHD RASFAN/AFP via Getty Images)
One evening in October 2021, Bilal was staying with a group of friends when armed Taliban members broke into the “safe house”. They forcefully detained him and another person in the middle of the night. The rest of the group managed to escape through the back door.
The Taliban locked them up in a bathroom and left them there until the next morning when the torture began.
“They beat me up with power cables and threw cold water on me and passed electricity through it. These burns you are seeing, are because of this. I passed out of pain,” narrates Bilal.
