A small group of Afghan women staged a flash protest in Kabul on Thursday to defy the Taliban regime which banned them from studying at university, an activist said, adding that some of them had been arrested.
“Rights for all or none,” chanted protesters in a Kabul neighborhood, according to video footage obtained by AFP. About 20 Afghan women, dressed in hijabs and some wearing masks, shouted in the street for their right to study with their fists raised.
But “some women were arrested by female police officers who took them away,” a protester told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Two women were subsequently released, but several remained in detention,” she added.
Protests by women have been increasingly rare in Afghanistan since the arrest of prominent female activists earlier this year. Participants are at risk of arrest, violence and stigma.
Initially scheduled in front of the Kabul campus, the largest and most prestigious in the country, the event had to be moved due to the deployment of numerous armed security forces.
“Afghan girls are a dead people…they are crying blood,” said Wahida Wahid Durani, a journalism student at the University of Herat.
“They are using all their strength against us. I’m afraid that soon they will announce that women don’t have the right to breathe,” added the student.
On Tuesday evening, in a terse letter, Minister of Higher Education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, ordered all public and private universities in the country to bar female students from attending classes for an indefinite period.
This new attack on the rights of women, who are already excluded from secondary schools, has been a shock for many young girls in the country and has drawn international condemnation.
Since the accession to power of Islamist fundamentalists in August 2021, after 20 years of war with the Americans and NATO forces, women have seen their freedom restricted over the months.
They are now excluded from many public jobs or paid a pittance to stay at home, they are also not allowed to travel without being accompanied by a male relative and must wear a burqa or hijab. when they leave their homes.
In November, the Taliban also banned them from entering parks, gardens, sports halls and public baths.