The Afghan authorities “beat and arrested” this Thursday a professor who denounced on television the ban on studying at the university imposed on women by the Taliban regime, the university professor’s assistant revealed.
In December, during a live interview on one of the country’s largest private television channels, TOLOnews, Ismail Mashal tore up the diplomas he had earned throughout his career to defend women’s right to higher education.
Despite promises of flexibility, the Taliban, which reconquered Afghanistan in August 2021, then returned to the ultra-rigid interpretation of Islam that marked the first step to power (1996-2001) and have multiplied the measures aimed at expelling the women of citizenship. space.
In recent days, several local television channels have shown Mashal, who was also leaving three private universities in Kabul, pushing a kind of supermarket cart full of books through the streets of the capital, which he offered to passersby.
“[Mashal] He was mercilessly beaten and taken away in a very disrespectful manner by members of the Islamic Emirate”, the official name of the Taliban regime, denounced the assistant, Farid Ahmad Fazli, to the France-Presse news agency (AFP).
The director of the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture, Abdul Haq Hammad, confirmed the arrest.
“Professor Mashal has been carrying out acts of provocation against the system for some time. The security services have taken him for questioning as part of an investigation,” Haq Hammad wrote today on the social network Twitter.
The professor was arrested Thursday without “having committed any crime,” Fazli said, noting that Mashal offered the books to “sisters [mulheres] and men” and that the professor is being held in an unknown location.
Footage of Mashal getting angry on live television and tearing up academic diplomas quickly went viral on social media.
In Afghanistan’s deeply conservative and patriarchal society, it is rare, says AFP, to see a man protesting against the disenfranchisement of women.
Mashal has often stated that she will continue to campaign for women’s rights.
Source: TSF
