By: Rukhshana Media
Dozens of female employees of the former government and educated girls displayed their work and education documents in Kabul to protest against the unemployment and extensive restrictions imposed on women’s rights on Monday, October 30, but the Taliban forces dispersed them.
According to the protesters, the Taliban did not allow the media to cover the protest.
“We displayed our work and education documents to protest against the unemployment and restrictions imposed by the Taliban,” Julia Parsi, a women’s library manager and one of the protesters, tells Rukhshana Media. “But the Taliban forces scattered them and did not allow us to recollect.”
Ms. Parsi says the Taliban took the journalists covering the protests to the 10th police district and signed a letter of commitment that they would never cover any other protests.
Zarifa Yaqubi, another one protester, says that instead of slogans, they displayed their academic documents in protest against the prevailing and suffocating situation.
According to her, the protest was held against the dismissal of female employees from government offices and the increasing unemployment of women, and the extensive restrictions imposed by the Taliban on the personal and social freedoms of women and girls.
“We worked hard and studied for 20 years,” Arezo, another protester, says. “But now, instead of using the capacity of women and girls in the country’s development, the Taliban try to remove them from society.”
The protesters urged the international community to support the Afghan women and girls in practice to show they have not been forgotten under the oppression of the Taliban.
After the collapse of the previous government, the Taliban dissolved the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and many other institutions supporting Afghan women and fired female employees from government offices, and imposed extensive restrictions on their personal and social freedom.
