A group of Afghan women marched the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital on Tuesday to demand the right to education following the expulsion of female students from the Kabul University dormitory.
According to media reports, the few dozen of women were carrying signs reading: “Education is our red line” and rending chants that the world has forgotten them under the Taliban.
In a report published by France 24, the peaceful protest, however, was dispersed and the women were removed from the area by the Taliban, who warned them about the risk of attack.
“Once again, the Taliban prevented us from demonstrating by insulting and threatening us,” one of the protesting women said.
“Unfortunately, the Taliban threatened us with explosion and suicide bombing,” she added.
“Today’s protest was for girls who have been expelled,” the organiser of the protest, Zholia Parsi said.
The demonstration was triggered by the killing of more than 50 students in September who are mainly young women in an attack in Kabul.
When demonstrations emerged last month, the Taliban broke up or suppressed protests in several provinces by force.
In Kabul, dozens of female Hazara students who were planning to join a protest claimed to be poisoned in the Kabul University dormitory.
A few days later, the dormitory authorities expelled a number of these students for protesting their alleged poisoning, the report said.
However, the Taliban’s higher education ministry claimed that the poisoning was due to overeating and that the expulsion of the girls was based on the university’s rules to maintain order and discipline.
The Ministry of Higher Education said Monday that an undisclosed number of students “who violated the rules and regulations of the university’s dormitory” had been expelled from their accommodations.
