By Somaia Walizadeh
A young man dares to tell his story of abuse in an Afghan prison—a quiet testimony of pain, resilience, and the silence that surrounds Afghanistan’s queer community.
Hiding
I imagine Idris sitting quietly in a dim room in Herat, hands wrapped around a steaming glass of tea, the call to prayer drifts through the dusk. His hands won’t warm up.
We speak from afar, on a social media platform. I am in Europe; he is in the city where I come from. Idris is utterly alone, yet his pain is unmistakable.
“They didn’t consider me human,” he says. His voice trembles slightly, as if unused to being heard—the sound of someone learning, at last, to tell his own story.
“I was taken prisoner by the Taliban in 2022. Maybe someone reported me, I don’t know. They held me for four days. I was beaten. Every night I thought they would rape me.”
His voice wavers—soft, uneven—as if the pain still lives in every syllable. “And then they did.”
He was seventeen. The men told him if he was caught again, he wouldn’t leave alive. “That night,” he whispers, “I wanted to die.”
Idris was released after a few days on bail, but his body and mind were never the same. Idris says, “When I got out of prison, I couldn’t walk on my own; two people were holding me under my arms. My whole body was shaking. I was unable to go home.”
Human Rights Watch published a report in the same year a little later that the Taliban routinely arrest, torture, and sometimes execute queer and trans Afghans. Idris is one of the few who lived—though he doesn’t call it living.
Escaping the Cell
“I didn’t plan to leave Afghanistan,” Idris tells me. “But after that… what choice did I have?”
He was rejected by his family and had no money and no papers. Borrowing from a friend, he paid a smuggler to take him across the Islam Qala border.
The road to Iran was brutal—dry air, sleepless nights, and constant fear. “I was harassed constantly, humiliated, and hungry,” he says. “But I kept walking.”
In Iran, safety was another illusion. “If they discover you’re trans there, your life is over,” he says. “The police nearly caught me a few times. I worked hard in some low-paying jobs and lived in fear.”
Idris was eventually arrested and deported back to Afghanistan in 2023. Amnesty International called such deportations “a blatant violation of the principle of non-refoulement”—the ”law forbidding the return of people to countries where they face torture or death.
Idris smiles faintly. “Laws,” he says. “They exist for others.”
A Childhood Without Refuge
When I ask when his pain began, he sighs. “Since childhood. I always felt different.”
He remembers mirrors that didn’t reflect someone he recognized, and laughter that followed him from classroom to street. But it was at home where the cruelty cut deepest.
“My home was a prison,” he says. “I was beaten, cursed, humiliated. They called me a stain. They said I had taken away their honor.”
As he grew older, the violence followed him beyond those walls—through alleys, markets, and neighborhoods that never let him forget his difference. “Fear,” he says, “became my shadow.”
Surviving in the Shadows
Now, at twenty, Idris lives in a mosque in Herat. He sleeps on the floor, survives on charity, and avoids the streets.
“I beg for food,” he says. “I’m just surviving, not living. If I go out, the Taliban or my family might find me.”
He has tried to end his life more than once. Still, he dreams. “Of a small home, honest work, and a smile that isn’t forced.”
The World That Pretends Not to See
OutRight International and ILGA Asia report that Afghanistan has no protections for LGBTQ+ people. Under Taliban rule, being queer is treated as a crime, often punished by neighbors or family.
Despite international warnings, Iran and Pakistan continue to deport Afghan queer refugees—returning them to persecution or death. Amnesty International calls it what it is: sending them back to torture.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both confirmed what Idris’s story reveals: Afghanistan’s queer community lives in constant fear, stripped of protection and dignity. The Taliban invoke sharia to justify imprisonment and torture. Deportations send queer Afghans back to the same danger they fled.
Idris’s story is not unique—it is a mirror. It reflects a world that looks away. His survival is an act of resistance, and his voice, though soft, reminds us of a simple truth: silence can kill.
Author’s Note
This story was compiled through direct interviews and verified human rights documentation. Some names and details have been changed for safety. Idris’s words are quoted as spoken, translated from Dari. His story represents countless others whose voices have been silenced.
Read also about Dayana, a queer activist fighting against gender apartheid in Afghanistan. And about Elina, a queer woman living in Kabul in a kind of arrest of her family.
Human Rights Watch about human rights abuses of LGBTIQ+ individuals in Afghanistan.
