LGBTQ+ Community Fear For Their Life Under Taliban Regime

Members of the Turkish LGBTQ+ community hold rainbow flags during a solidarity protest action to support Afghan women in Ankara on August 25, 2021

New Delhi: The LGBTQ+ of Afghanistan has sent out an SOS to the world community to rescue them because they fear they will definitely be killed. “We are asking to be evacuated immediately from Afghanistan,” they have appealed.

Members and advocates of the LGBTQ community told CNN they fear that the new Taliban government would follow the same rules on homosexuality as they did during their first rule in the 90s. Under the first Taliban government, homosexuality was punishable by death.

Even if the Taliban gave some rights to women, they would never accept gay or LGBTQ+ people, they fear.

It is not as if life was easy in the former US-backed government in Kabul.

According to a 2020 US State Department report on Afghanistan, LGBTQ people faced “discrimination, assault and rape” as well as harassment and arrest by authorities.

“Homosexuality was widely seen as taboo and indecent,” the report stated. Under the previous government, homosexuality was illegal and punishable by up to two years in jail.

According to a 2013 UK government report, while the Afghan laws on homosexuality were not always enforced, they did make LGBTQ+ citizens vulnerable to extortion and abuse by authorities.

LGBTQ+ community members, who spoke to CNN, said they regularly faced discrimination, including verbal abuse and the threat of physical violence, but there was “at least a space in society for them”.