Female students protested outside Badakhshan University after being denied entry by the Taliban because they did not wear burqas.
Videos of the demonstration show a large crowd of female students, many wearing black clothes, hijabs and coloured chadors, being violently dispersed by members of the Taliban’s religious police, the so-called directorate of vice and virtue.
“It was eight a.m., and according to the daily routine, we wanted to enter the university, but the Taliban prevented us from entering because we did not have a burqa,” explains one of the students, who spoke to Zan Times on condition of anonymity. She says that after the female students insisted on entering the university, they were stopped by the Taliban, who beat and cursed the women. Eventually some women managed to enter the university, but around 60 students continued to demonstrate.
In these videos, which were shared with Zan Times, the students defied the Taliban and stayed for around five hours in front of the university gate, chanting “Education is our right” and “We want education.”
This is the latest in a series of reports from across the country of female students being harassed and forced to veil. In May the Taliban announced their mandatory hijab policy, by which women must cover their faces in public. The preferred clothing of the Taliban is the burqa or the black Arabic dress that covers a woman from head to toe. They are enforcing these dress codes with increasing severity.
