Taliban security forces used a water cannon on Saturday to disperse women protesting against the ban on university education in Afghanistan, according to eyewitnesses quoted by international news agencies.
The decision to ban women from universities was taken by the Taliban-led government on Tuesday and has sparked outrage and opposition at home and beyond.
Since the ban was enacted, which took effect immediately, Afghan women have been demonstrating in major cities, a rare sign of protest since the Taliban seized power last year.
According to eyewitnesses in the western city of Herat, some two dozen women were on their way to the provincial governor’s house today to protest the ban, chanting “Education is our right,” when a water cannon fired by security attacked them. pushed back. cash.
Video shared with The Associated Press shows women screaming and hiding on a side street to escape the water cannon, then resumed their protest, chanting “Shameful.”
One of the organizers of the protest, Maryam (who did not reveal her nickname for fear of reprisals), said that between 100 and 150 women participated in the demonstration, moving in small groups from different parts of the city towards a central meeting point. .
“There was security on every street, every square, armored vehicles and armed men,” he said, adding: “When we started our protest, in Tariqi Park, the Taliban tore branches from the trees and beat us, but we continued our protest. They increased their presence and around 11:00 a.m. they took out the water cannon.”
A spokesman for the provincial governor, Hamidullah Mutawakil, said there were only four or five protesters.
“They didn’t have an agenda, they just came here to make a movie,” she said, without mentioning violence against women or the use of a water cannon.
A testimony collected by the German agency DPA also reports that more than a hundred protesters gathered today next to the Herat provincial government building, chanting the slogan “Education is our right.”
The ban on women attending university has drawn widespread international condemnation, including from Muslim-majority countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as warnings from the United States and the G-7 group. policy will have consequences for the Taliban.
A Taliban government official, Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim, first spoke about the ban on Thursday in an interview with Afghan state television, saying the move was necessary to prevent gender mixing in universities and because believes that some subjects taught violate the tenets of Islam.
Nida Mohammad Nadim further said that the ban would be in effect until further notice.
Despite initially promising more moderate rules respecting the rights of women and minorities, the Taliban have largely applied their interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, since taking power in August 2021.
They barred girls from high school and college, barred women from most career fields, and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public.
Women are also prohibited from going to parks and gyms. At the same time, Afghan society, while largely traditional, has increasingly embraced the education of girls and women over the past two decades.
Also today, in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, dozens of Afghan refugee students protested against the ban on female higher education in their homeland and demanded the immediate reopening of all-female college campuses.
Source: TSF
