On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban’s takeover, the Powerful Women of Afghanistan Movement, condemning the group’s four years in power, has said that this day is recorded in the collective memory of the Afghan people as a “dark and painful day,” and that since then, the country has fallen into darkness, repression, discrimination, and crisis.

Coinciding with August 15, the Women’s Movement Towards Freedom has said that this day marks “the darkest days in Afghanistan’s modern history and the beginning of darkness, repression, fear, and widespread human rights violations,” a day after which fear, discrimination, and injustice have overshadowed the fate of millions of Afghans.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), in a statement, has condemned the arbitrary arrest of journalists and media workers in Kabul by the Taliban and has called for their immediate release and an end to the group’s pressure on the media.

The Afghanistan Women’s Political Participation Network, on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Taliban regime’s return to power, in a statement described this day as a “black day” in the country’s history, saying that the past four years have brought the people of Afghanistan nothing but “oppression, fear, poverty, forced displacement, killing, imprisonment, torture, rape, humiliation, and injustice.”