Afghanistan: Women’s protests sweep country in response to Taliban brutality
Women’s protests are growing and girls seem to be clamoring for justice despite the dangers of speaking out in a Taliban-controlled country. Female students in several provinces protested an attack on a higher education center in Kabul on Friday that killed more than 50 people and injured dozens. The vast majority of the victims of the attack were young women and girls, according to the UN office in the country and officials from the Higher Education Center (KAAJ), which was hit by a suicide bombing, struck a neighborhood of minorities in western Kabul, which is largely inhabited by members of the Shia Muslim Hazara ethnic group. For years, Afghan Hazaras were targeted by the country’s branch of ISIS, both of which are considered to be the largest victims of the ongoing genocide against the Hazaras one of many ethnic groups.
Right to life
In recent years, the Hazaras have been the target of a series of massacres, including previous attacks in Dasht-e-Barchi, targeting wedding halls, hospitals, sports centers, schools, educational centers and mosques, according to CBS, pointing to women leading protests in most cases and people taking to the streets over the weekend chanting “Security is our right! Education is our right! Stop the genocide”. On social media, the hashtag “Stop Hazara Genocide” garnered more than a million tweets and was used by many members of the former Afghan government, which collapsed in August 2021 with the return of the Taliban to power. Former Vice President Abdul Rachid Dostom wrote on Twitter, “We must admit that the Hazaras were killed many times in a systematic and purposeful manner in places of education, health, sports and mosques. We have witnessed the massacre of Hazara students several times”. He added that university students held one of the largest protests on Monday in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of the northern province of Balkh, and like every other protest in the country since the takeover of the group, met with a swift and armed response by the security forces, and videos of students joining the social media, apparently to the Taliban, In one of the videos, “Silence is a betrayal”, women break a door to get out, while other women who go out to the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif chants, “We are innocent, don’t kill us!”.
Repression and violence
Heather Barr, Director of Women’s Rights at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, tweeted the video: “When you lock students in their dormitories to silence them, it shows how scared you are of women’s voices.” According to the US-based network, the Taliban launched a violent attack on protests in Herat and Bamiyan provinces on Sunday in solidarity with the Hazara students who were killed in the Kajal attack. Armed members of the group beat women, fired shots in the air, and threatened students by warning them that their university would turn into a mosque if they did not stop, according to one female protester. Videos circulated on social media also show a apparently armed member holding a woman from her shoulder, pushing her away, pointing out a gun at the capital, and then threatening protesters in Kabul Violence as Taliban forces fired shots in the air to disperse the protesters, one of the women who attended the protest, Parveen Nikpin, said the Taliban had beaten people there, including a woman who had been taken to hospital.
Another protester said: They used blows with the butt of a rifle and stun guns against us. They were so brutal and threatened to kill us if we don’t stop, we want our rights, we want our security rights, why are you killing us? The Taliban officially banned protests in Afghanistan after regaining power more than a year ago, but brave women and girls continue to stage protests despite the risk of arrest or violence to demand their rights.
