France 24
12 Sep 2022
Text by News Wires
<<UN accuses Taliban of harassing, detaining female staff in Afghanistan
The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has accused the Taliban authorities of intimidating and harassing its female staff working in the country, including detaining three women for questioning on Monday. Since the Taliban seized power in August last year, they have imposed harsh restrictions on girls and women to comply with their austere vision of Islam -- effectively squeezing them out of public life. <There has been an emerging pattern of harassment of Afghan UN female staff by the de facto authorities,> the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a statement. Citing an example, UNAMA said three Afghan women working for the organisation were <singled out and temporarily detained for questioning> by armed security agents of the authorities on Monday. It did not offer further details about the incident. <The UN calls for an immediate end to all such acts of intimidation and harassment targeting its Afghan female staff,> UNAMA said, insisting the authorities provide guarantees for the security of all UN personnel in Afghanistan.
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UNAMA's accusation came hours after a top UN expert warned the state of human rights in the country had deteriorated across the board. Women and girls in particular have seen a <staggering regression> in their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights since the Taliban came to power, Richard Bennett, the special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, said in Geneva. <There's no country in the world where women and girls have so rapidly been deprived of their fundamental human rights purely because of gender.> The Taliban have enforced strict rules on women, including shutting girls' secondary schools in most provinces and barring women from many government jobs. They have also ordered women to cover up in public, preferably with an all-encompassing burqa. These restrictions on women's rights have emerged as an obstacle for the international community to formally recognise the Taliban government.
(AFP)>>
Read all here:
https://www.france24.com/en/afghanistan/20220912-un-accuses-taliban-of-harassing-detaining-female-staff-in-afghanistan

France 24
19 Oct 2022
By Sonia Ghezali
<<The persecution of the Hazaras: Afghan Shiites targeted by deadly attacks.
Afghanistan's Hazara community, a Shiite minority, is regularly targeted by the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS) group, which considers Hazaras as heretics. Dozens of people, mostly girls, were killed in an attack on an education centre in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul on September 30. Although the attack has not been claimed, the IS group is the main suspect. Since the Taliban seized power a year ago, Hazaras denounce systemic discrimination and the inability of the new authorities to ensure their safety. Our correspondents report.:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20221019-the-persecution-of-the-hazaras-afghan-shiites-targeted-by-deadly-attacks

France 24
13 Oct 2022
By Lauren Bain
<<In Afghanistan, girls are at increasing risk of child marriage. As hunger and poverty surge, families are offering their underage girls, some very young, to older men in exchange for money. Volunteers from Too Young to Wed are helping girls reunite with their parents.>>
Watch the video, 4.48 min., here:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20221013-child-marriages-in-afghanistan-the-fight-against-selling-underage-girls

ADDITIONAL NEWS
Paris 24
12 Oct 2022
<<Online education is the only hope for Afghan schoolgirl, but it's a slog....>>
Read the full story here:
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20211012-online-education-is-the-only-hope-for-afghan-schoolgirl-but-it-s-a-slog
Note from Gino d'Artali: It really is worth your time.

France 24
25 Oct 2022
By Leela Jacinto
<<'I felt solidarity': Afghan women monitor Iran protests, vow to continue fight for basic rights.
Since the Taliban takeover last year, Afghan women and girls have been demonstrating for their right to education and employment. So, when women in Iran began anti-regime protests after the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, their Afghan sisters have been moni-toring the situation across the border, hoping for a spillover effect.
Raihana M* was in her living room in the Afghan capital, Kabul, when she first heard of protests erupting across the border in neighbouring Iran following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code. The Afghan social worker saw footage of the protests in Iran on Manoto TV, a London-based Persian language TV station, and said she felt an immediate, almost physical, rush of solidarity for her Iranian sisters.
<I was really shocked and sad. As an Afghan, as a woman, I felt solidarity because we are experiencing the same thing. Only it's worse for women in Afghanistan,> she explained in a phone interview from Kabul. That was in late September, not long after 22-year-old Amini was declared dead by the Iranian authorities. Raihana then took to social media, watching clips of protests across Iranian cities and towns. Other Afghan women living under the Taliban regime were also doing the same. Within days, a group of around 30 Afghan women gathered outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul chanting, <Zan, zendagi, azadi!> (Women, life, freedom), echoing the protest cry from Iran. They also held banners proclaiming, <From Kabul to Iran, say no to dictatorship!>. Taliban officials then moved in to break up the demonstration, firing into the air and threatening to hit the women with their rifle butts. Afghan women despite being under immense pressure and Deprived of their all human and basic rights themselves decided to protest In Solidarity and support of Women of Iran, in front of Iranian Embassy in Kabul.#Mahsa_Amini‌ #OpIran
pic.twitter.com/XkfXLayDRE
- Nilofar Ayoubi (@NilofarAyoubi) September 29, 2022
Lina Qasimi, an Afghan teenager who has been unable to go to school since the Taliban shut down secondary schools, has also been keenly following the protests in Iran. <I feel very close to this. It's really terrible. No one should be killed for just showing their hair. But in Afghanistan, it's not just hair, it's women. Just being a woman is a problem for the Taliban,> she said.
....
Afghan women are really alone’
As protests spread across Iran, both Raihana and Qasimi were struck by the extraordinary scenes of Iranian men joining the women in their anti-regime demonstrations. <The difference is, in Iran, all the people are standing up. Iranian women and men are really protesting in unity,> noted Raihana. <In Afghanistan, it's not like that - people are so afraid. Afghan women are really alone.> That's true, says Tamim Asey, co-founder of the Kabul-based Institute for War and Peace Studies and a former Afghan deputy defence minister. <Iranian women have the support of men in considerable ways. Afghan women don't have that. Afghan men have suffered 40 years of war, so much violence, so much killing. The Taliban are also put-ting tremendous pressure on the men. If some women protest, they find their husbands, fathers, brothers and arrest them,> he explain-ed. Afghan women began protesting the week after the Taliban seized control of Kabul on August 15, 2021, despite the grave risk of confronting a movement of hardline Islamist male fighters. The crackdown has been brutal and extends to male relatives of 'troublesome' women, according to rights groups. In a report last week, the New York-based Human Rights Watch detailed the arrests of three women, who were arrested with their husbands and children, separated under detention and severely tortured. The detained women include Tamana Paryani, who filmed herself pleading for help as the Taliban broke into her house at night in January after she joined a women’s protest demanding the right to education and work.>>
Read all and view a video here:
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20221025-i-felt-solidarity-afghan-women-monitor-iran-protests-vow-to-continue-fight-for-basic-rights

France 24
19 Oct 2022
FOCUS by Shahzaib Wahlah|Sonia Ghezali
<<The persecution of the Hazaras: Afghan Shiites targeted by deadly attacks.
Afghanistan's Hazara community, a Shiite minority, is regularly targeted by the Afghan branch of the Islamic State (IS) group, which considers Hazaras as heretics. Dozens of people, mostly girls, were killed in an attack on an education centre in a Shiite neighbourhood of Kabul on September 30. Although the attack has not been clai-med, the IS group is the main suspect. Since the Taliban seized power a year ago, Hazaras denounce systemic discrimination and the inability of the new authorities to ensure their safety. Our correspondents report.>>
Watch the video here:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/focus/20221019-the-persecution-of-the-hazaras-afghan-shiites-targeted-by-deadly-attacks

France 24
30 May 2022
'Perspective' by Stuart Norval
<<Life in Afghanistan 'has become a prison for most women and girls'.
Afghanistan is heading back to the pre-2001 dark days of the Taliban, and Western powers were naive if they ever thought this wouldn't be the case. That's the view of Heather Barr, associate women's rights director at Human Rights Watch. As women are told to cover their faces in public again and female television presenters are told to do the same, she spoke to us on Perspective about the how the Taliban are rolling back women's rights and what, if anything, the West can do about it. <Life has become a prison for most women and girls,> she told us.>>
Watch the video here:
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/perspective/20220530-life-in-afghanistan-has-become-a-prison-for-most-women-and-girls

France 24
13 Oct 2022
<<Afghan girls take university exams two weeks after classroom attack.
Thousands of Afghan girls and women sat university entrance exams on Thursday under the guard of Taliban snipers, two weeks after a bomber killed dozens of students preparing for the tests. Since the Taliban returned to power last August, many girls have been banned from secondary education. Meanwhile a collapsed economy has made university unaffordable to many, and parents have pulled children from class over safety fears. Last month an attacker burst into an education centre in Kabul, detonating himself in a segregated study hall killing 53 students, including 46 women and girls. <There is so much anxiety,> said 18-year-old student Zahra, who hopes to study computer science. <Our minds are disturbed, always feeling that at any time there could be a blast,> she told AFP before entering. Dressed in black hijabs and headscarves, the students were under the heavy guard of Taliban personnel as they queued for their entrance exams outside the prestigious Kabul University. Students were thoroughly searched before being allowed to sit the exam, while Taliban forces patrolled the surrounding area and shut nearby streets with roadblocks. <This time all my worries are due to the security situation. Everyone is so scared,> said student Madina. <Please pray that there are no blasts.>
Boys and men had taken their exams earlier in the day. Students also told AFP that many of their classmates were staying away from the university, cancelling the test for fear of an attack. The entrance tests, which all prospective university students must take, were being held for the first time since the Taliban's return to power.
However, with restrictions on girls' secondary education, fewer female students will qualify for the exam. <If there are no educated girls then how could we have a developed society?> said one female student, declining to give her name. Kabul University was attacked in November 2020 by gunmen who killed more than 20 students.
But <nobody can stop us>, said professor Yahya Homai.
<Nobody can take away the pen and book from our hands,> he added.>>
Read more here:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221013-afghan-girls-take-university-exams-two-weeks-after-classroom-attack


The Guardian
Supported by The Guardian
5 Oct 2022
By Deepa Parent
<<'She could have done so much good in this world': victims of the Kabul blast remembered.
Last week, a suicide bomber killed at least 53 people - mostly girls from the minority Hazara ethnic group - outside an education centre in Kabul. Here, relatives and friends of four young women who died remember their loved ones.>>
Read their more than touchings memories here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/05/victims-of-the-afghanistan-kabul-blast-remembered
Note by Gino d'Artali: if it doesn't touch your heart you don't have a heart.

France 24 | News Wires
3 Oct 2022
<<Death toll tops 50 in suicide attack on female Afghan students, UN says.
Forty-six girls and young women were among those killed in a suicide bombing on an Afghan education centre last week, the UN said Mon-day as it announced the total death toll had risen to 53. A suicide bomber blew himself up on Friday next to women at a gender-segregated study hall packed with hundreds of students sitting a practice test for university admissions. The attack happened in a Kabul neighbourhood home to the historically oppressed Shiite Muslim Hazara community, which has been subjected to some of the worst violence in the country's recent history. <Our human rights team continues documenting the crime: verifying facts & establishing reliable data to counter denial & revisionism,> the United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) tweeted.
Further rise in casualties from Friday's classroom bombing in #Hazara quarter of #Kabul:
53 killed, at least 46 girls & young women
110 injured
Our human rights team continues documenting the crime: verifying facts & establishing reliable data to counter denial & revisionism
— UNAMA News (@UNAMAnews) October 3, 2022
It raised the death toll from 43 to 53, adding that a further 110 had been wounded.
Afghanistan's Taliban authorities, which have often tried to play down attacks challenging their regime, have said 25 people were killed and 33 others wounded. No group has so far claimed responsibility, but the jihadist Islamic State group (IS), which considers Shiites as heretics, has carried out several deadly attacks in the same area targeting girls, schools and mosques. Education is a flashpoint issue in Afghanistan, with the Taliban blocking many girls from returning to secondary education, while IS also stands against the education of women and girls.
....
Friday's attack has triggered sporadic women-led protests in Kabul and some other cities. Around 50 women chanted, <Stop Hazara genocide, it's not a crime to be a Shiite>, as they marched on Saturday in the Dasht-e-Barchi neighbourhood where the attack happened. The rallies have been dispersed by Taliban forces often firing shots into the air and beating protesters. Afghanistan's Hazaras have regularly faced attacks in the majority Sunni Muslim country. They have been persecuted for decades, targeted by the Taliban during their insurgency against the former US-backed government as well as by IS. In May last year, before the Taliban's return to power, at least 85 people - mainly girls - were killed and about 300 were wounded when three bombs exploded near their school in Dasht-e-Barchi.>>
Read more here:
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20221003-death-toll-rises-in-afghan-suicide-attack-on-female-students-in-exam-centre

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