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KABUL: Taliban fighters beat ladies protesters and fired into the air on Saturday as they violently dispersed a uncommon rally within the Afghan capital, days forward of the primary anniversary of their return to energy.
Since seizing management on August 15 final 12 months, the Taliban have rolled again the marginal good points made by ladies throughout twenty years of US intervention in Afghanistan.
About 40 ladies — chanting “bread, work and freedom” — marched in entrance of the schooling ministry constructing in Kabul, earlier than the fighters dispersed them by firing their weapons into the air, an AFP correspondent reported.
Some ladies protesters who took refuge in close by retailers had been chased and crushed by Taliban fighters with their rifle butts.
The demonstrators carried a banner which learn “August 15 is a black day” as they demanded rights to work and political participation.
“Justice, justice. We’re fed up with ignorance,” they chanted, many not sporting face veils.
“Sadly, the Taliban from the intelligence service got here and fired within the air,” stated Zholia Parsi, one of many organisers of the march.
“They dispersed the ladies, tore our banners and confiscated the cellphones of many ladies.”
However protester Munisa Mubariz vowed to proceed combating for ladies’s rights.
“If the Taliban wish to silence this voice, it is not attainable. We’ll protest from our houses,” she stated.
Some journalists masking the demonstration — the primary ladies’s rally in months — had been additionally crushed by the Taliban fighters, an AFP correspondent noticed.
‘Making ladies invisible’
Whereas the Taliban authorities have allowed and even promoted some rallies towards america, they’ve declined permission for any ladies’s rally since they returned to energy.
After seizing management final 12 months, the Taliban promised a softer model in comparison with the final time they had been in energy from 1996 to 2001.
However many restrictions have already been imposed, particularly on ladies, to adjust to the motion’s imaginative and prescient.
Tens of 1000’s of ladies have been shut out of secondary faculties, whereas ladies have been barred from returning to many authorities jobs.
Ladies have additionally been banned from travelling alone on lengthy journeys and might solely go to public gardens and parks within the capital on days separate from males.
In Might, the nation’s supreme chief and chief of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada, ordered ladies to completely cowl themselves in public, together with their faces — ideally with an all-encompassing burqa.
Because the secondary college ban was introduced in March, many secret faculties for these women have sprung up throughout a number of provinces.
The United Nations and rights teams have repeatedly slammed the Taliban authorities for imposing the restrictions on ladies.
These insurance policies present a “sample of absolute gender segregation and are aimed toward making ladies invisible within the society”, Richard Bennett, UN particular rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, informed reporters in Kabul throughout a go to in Might.
Human Rights Watch on Thursday known as on the Taliban to “reverse their horrifying and misogynistic” choice to bar ladies from schooling.
“This is able to ship a message that the Taliban are prepared to rethink their most egregious actions,” Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher on the rights group, stated in an announcement.
Some Afghan ladies initially pushed again towards the curbs, holding small protests.
However the Taliban quickly rounded up the ringleaders, holding them incommunicado whereas denying that they had been detained.
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