Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have \u201cbeaten and detained\u201d an academic who voiced outrage on live television against their ban on women\u2019s university education, his aide said Friday.<\/p>\n
Veteran journalism lecturer Ismail Mashal caused a storm by tearing his degree certificates to shreds on TV in December, protesting the edict ending women\u2019s higher education.
\nIn recent days, domestic channels showed Mashal carting books around Kabul and offering them to passers-by.<\/p>\n
\u201cMashal was mercilessly beaten and taken away in a very disrespectful manner by members of the Islamic Emirate,\u201d Mashal\u2019s aide Farid Ahmad Fazli told AFP, referring to the Taliban government.<\/p>\n
A Taliban official confirmed the detention.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeacher Mashal had indulged in provocative actions against the system for some time,\u201d tweeted Abdul Haq Hammad, director at the Ministry of Information and Culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe security agencies took him for investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mashal \u2014 a lecturer for more than a decade at three Kabul universities \u2014 was detained on Thursday despite having \u201ccommitted no crime,\u201d Fazli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was giving free books to sisters (women) and men,\u201d he added. \u201cHe is still in detention and we don\u2019t know where he is being held.\u201d<\/p>\n
Footage of Mashal destroying his certificates on private channel TOLOnews went viral on social media.<\/p>\n
In deeply conservative and patriarchal Afghanistan it is rare to see a man protest in support of women but Mashal, who ran a co-educational institute, said he would stand up for women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a man and as a teacher, I was unable to do anything else for them, and I felt that my certificates had become useless. So, I tore them,\u201d he told AFP at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m raising my voice. I\u2019m standing with my sisters… My protest will continue even if it costs my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
A small group of male students also held a brief walkout protesting the ban.<\/p>\n
The Taliban promised a softer regime when they returned to power in August 2021 but they have instead imposed harsh restrictions on women \u2014 effectively squeezing them out of public life.<\/p>\n
In December, the authorities ordered all aid groups to stop their women employees coming to work. They have since granted an exemption to the health sector, allowing females to return to employment there.<\/p>\n
Secondary schools for girls have also been closed for over a year, while many women have lost jobs in government sectors.<\/p>\n
They have also been barred from going to parks, gyms and public baths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have \u201cbeaten and detained\u201d an academic who voiced outrage on live television against their ban on women\u2019s university education, his aide said Friday. Veteran journalism lecturer Ismail Mashal caused a storm by tearing his degree certificates to shreds on TV in December, protesting the edict ending women\u2019s higher education. In recent days, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,54,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","category-islamabad","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113026,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113024\/revisions\/113026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/113025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}