Women and children are at high risk for coronavirus in an Afghan prison

At Kabul’s only prison for women, loudspeakers boom periodically: “Wash your hands every two hours for 20 seconds.” Guards pass out coronavirus safety pamphlets to the prisoners who can read.

In an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, a presidential decree announced at the end of March that the government would allow the release at least 10,000 prisoners over the age of 55, Reuters reported, but there are still more than 100 women in the Kabul prison. A number of the women are behind bars for killing their abusive husbands.

Afghanistan has an estimated 29,000 inmates, according to prison administration spokesman Farhad Bayani, NPR reported on May 6. Amnesty International said in April that “up to five people are squeezed into a single cell in unsanitary conditions and without access to adequate health facilities,” and that prisoners are “at high risk of infection.” The risk is usually even more daunting for women prisoners because they are often locked up with their children.

“There is ongoing discrimination against women and girls in general in Afghanistan,” said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia Director at Amnesty International. “This discrimination beside many other challenges makes women least important. The government must take immediate measures for the release of these women and for them to be safely relocated to limit the risk to them.”

Before the presidential decree, the Kabul women’s prison was overcrowded, a woman guard told France 24. “It was impossible to implement hygiene protocols,” she said. “Now it’s much better.”

A committee of mostly men decides daily on which prisoners to release. “Inmates accused of violence against women or crimes of national security are not pardoned and their sentence cannot be reduced,” a woman on the release committee said.

“‘Moral crimes’ for women including running away from home are forgiven according to the presidential decree,” she added. “Moral crimes” include things like being raped (which is considered sex outside of marriage) or fleeing domestic violence.

France 24 interviewed a former prisoner named Mursal, who’d been recently released after spending two years in prison for running away from her husband. She’d been sentenced to serve six years. She was forcibly married at 17 years old. While her husband suffered health issues, his brother “started coming after me,” she said. “He wanted me to sleep with him. He kept beating me. One night he beat me so badly that I ran away.”

As of May 29, Afghanistan reported that it had 14,525 cases of coronavirus and that there had been 249 deaths.