Depriving Women of Education, Work Will Worsen Situation In Afghanistan: Turkiye At UN

Education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai had travelled to Germany on Monday to support the demands of Paryani for the recognition of Taliban’s gender apartheid.

They called the restrictions on women in Afghanistan imposed by the Taliban "an extreme version of apartheid”.

Yousafzai said, "I think there are distinctions between Afghanistan’s and Africa’s experience of apartheid, because what was imposed to women in Afghanistan has been more severe than what was imposed on coloured people in Africa."

Toor Pekai Yousafzai, Malala's mother, also asked the international community to support the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan, especially their right to education.

Previously, Yousafzai had supported the protest of Paryani and other Afghan human rights activists using the two hashtags, "Stop gender apartheid in Afghanistan" and "Let Afghan girls get an education".

Paryani has been on a hunger strike since Friday, September 1, demanding recognition of the "gender apartheid" in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

In this protest, a number of human rights activists from Afghanistan and Iran also joined Paryani.

Meanwhile, Berivan Aymaz, vice-president of State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia visited Paryani at her sit-in tent in Cologne. She asked Paryani to end the hunger strike and invited her to speak in the state parliament.

Also, Paryani confirmed to Afghanistan International that Richard Bennett, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights for Afghanistan, also spoke to her on the phone.

On the other hand, Schahina Gambir, a member of the German Parliament, described Paryani’s hunger strike as a "drastic protest tool".

This representative of the Green Party in the German Bundestag said that the choice of such drastic form of protest shows how desperate the situation of women in Afghanistan is.

He said that all of these officials are religious clerics.

He added that only the Taliban has a minister dedicated to the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice and other Islamic countries lack having such an agency.

The Taliban-controlled media agency, Bakhtar News Agency, on Sunday reported that Hanafi, during his trip to Baghlan urged people to cooperate with this ministry of the Taliban.

Earlier, officials of this ministry had told media personnel that their members have no right to use violence against the people.

However, contrary to their statement, Afghanistan International has published several video clips over the past several months showing the ministry’s agents using violence against the people.

Also, the ministry’s officials have been accused of violating people's privacy in many cases. House search operations without a warrant and checking people's phones are among such cases of violating people's privacy.

During his speech in Baghlan, Hanafi said that their mission is "to implement virtues and eliminate vice".

Bugti said that the attack on Chitral last week had been organised in Afghanistan, but it is not yet known whether Afghan nationals had also been involved in the attack.

He was referring to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) attack on Wednesday, September 6, in Chitral of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa state, due to which several Pakistani soldiers were killed.

During a press conference in Islamabad, Bugti expressed hope that the Afghan Taliban will implement the Doha Agreement and ensure that the Afghan soil is not used against any other country.

Referring to the identity of the attackers in Chitral, this Pakistani official added, "It doesn't matter who waged this attack. For us, they are all terrorists."

Bugti said that the increase in terror attacks is not so high that it will panic Islamabad. He stressed that the government will not allow anyone to impose their will by force.

Following the attack on Chitral, last week a spokesperson of the TTP called the attack a "major operation" and claimed that they have captured several villages.

Chitral shares a border with Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan provinces of Afghanistan.

According to sources, Mujadadi was a member of Afghanistan’s Presidential Protection Service (PPS) during the previous regime.

Taliban has not commented on the issue yet.

Sources said that Mujadadi had been arrested in Khwaja Siaran village of Parwan province. His father is Abdul Latif Mujadadi, who was the deputy director of investigations for National Security Directorate [intelligence] in Parwan.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) had recently reported that the Taliban continues to arrest former soldiers, especially in Kabul and Panjshir.

UNAMA had said that it has recorded extrajudicial killings of former employees and security forces members of the previous government in different provinces.

However, Hanafi stressed that they accept media freedom only within the "framework of the [Taliban] Islamic system and national interests”.

During the past two years, organisations supporting human rights and journalism have expressed their concerns about the deteriorating media situation in Afghanistan.

On September 5, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) denounced the suppression of journalists in Afghanistan under the Taliban control and called for the immediate release of all media workers in Afghanistan.

The organisation added that the detention of journalists has increased in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, reacting to the criticisms, Hanafi in the presence of the media personnel, said, "Here the microphones [of various media outlets] are placed in front of us. There are different definitions of press freedom. We definitely do not have a problem with the freedom of the press and speech, if it is within the Islamic [Taliban] framework and our national interests."

The Taliban, especially the group’s intelligence agency, has been accused of censoring domestic media operations as well as threatening and arresting journalists.

IFJ said that since the Taliban’s takeover of power in Afghanistan, media activity in the country has been significantly restricted.

With the Taliban in power and the collapse of many media outlets, journalists have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and have faced severe economic difficulties.