HAMBURG, Germany — Hundreds of members of the Afghan diaspora gathered in Hamburg on Saturday to protest the Taliban’s recent mass detentions of women and girls in Herat, marking one of the largest demonstrations in a coordinated global wave of rallies.
While local Hamburg police confirmed that the turnout reached several hundred people, organizers estimated the crowd exceeded 3,000 participants. Chanting slogans of “Education, Work, Freedom,” demonstrators expressed solidarity with recent ground-level protests in Herat that were violently suppressed by Taliban security forces.
The Hamburg rally was part of a broader, synchronized movement across Europe, North America, and Asia, with parallel demonstrations in Germany taking place in Berlin, Nuremberg, and Stuttgart.
Protesters unified in calling on European governments and the United Nations to hold the Taliban accountable for systematic human rights violations and what they termed institutionalized gender apartheid.
