Taliban broke up women’s protest in Kabul with air gunfire

The fighters fired into the air on Saturday to disperse around 40 protesters who chanted “Bread, jobs and freedom” in front of the education ministry in the Afghan capital, an AFP correspondent reported. Some women who fled to nearby shops were chased by the Taliban and beaten with rifle butts. According to the AFP reporter, journalists who wanted to report on the first women’s demonstration in months were also beaten.

The demonstrators demanded the right to work and political participation. They carried a banner that read “August 15 is a black day” – Monday marks the first anniversary of the Taliban taking power.

At the time, the Taliban had promised a more moderate form of Islamist rule than the one they practiced in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001. But in the past twelve months, women’s rights, among other things, have again been massively curtailed.

Tens of thousands of girls have been excluded from secondary schools. Women are also no longer allowed to work in government offices. Separate visiting days for men and women have been introduced in the capital’s parks. In May, Taliban chief Hibatullah Akhundzada also ordered women to cover themselves completely in public.

The SPÖ member of parliament and development spokeswoman Petra Bayr took stock of a year of Taliban rule in a broadcast on Saturday. For women in particular, the situation in Afghanistan is “unbearable”. “Basic human rights such as the right to paid work and education, to be able to move about freely, to dress as one likes, freedom of expression, assembly and movement are absolute illusions and unattainable for women in Afghanistan,” Bayr wrote. The wearing of the burqa is enforced by moral guards without exception with all severity. The Ministry of Women’s Affairs has been replaced by the Ministry of Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice.