(Kabul) Secondary schools for girls in an eastern province of Afghanistan have barely reopened, angering dozens of students who demonstrated on Saturday to demand that the Taliban lift the ban , according to several witnesses.
Posted at 9:16 a.m.
Last week, five public secondary schools for girls in the province of Paktia had resumed classes, after hundreds of students and tribal leaders demanded their reopening, AFP learned on Thursday.
After coming to power in August 2021, the Taliban effectively banned secondary education, both middle and high school, for girls.
Four of these establishments were located in the capital of the province, inrez, and one in the district of Samkani.
But on Saturday morning, when the students from the schools in Garde went to class, they were asked to go home, women’s rights activist Yasmin and residents told AFP.
“When they didn’t allow the girls to enter the schools, we organized a demonstration,” said Yasmin, reached by telephone.
Journalists were not allowed to cover the protest.
Footage posted to social media shows young girls, some wearing full-body burkas, marching through downtown Garde as residents and shopkeepers look on.
“They (the Taliban) broke the mobile phones of some protesters”, to limit the dissemination of images, continued the women’s rights activist.
A resident of Garde, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, confirmed that the students “started to protest” when they saw “the doors of their school closed”.
“They protested peacefully, but the gathering was quickly dispersed by security forces,” he added.
Another resident, Mukhtar, also confirmed the protest.
Since their return to power, the Taliban have imposed severe restrictions on girls and women to conform to their ultra-rigorous vision of Islam, thus excluding them from public life.
In March, they ordered all secondary schools for girls to close, just hours after they reopened for the first time since returning to power.
The Taliban have since maintained that the ban was only linked to a “technical problem” and that classes would resume once a program, based on Islamic precepts, had been defined.
Some public schools nevertheless continued to operate in certain regions of the country, under pressure from local notables and families. However, they remain closed in most provinces.
According to UNICEF, approximately three million girls are currently denied access to secondary education.