Taliban did not allow female students to attend a program in celebration of International Student Day, students at Kandahar University tell Zan Times.
The event was to honour high-achieving university students on Thursday, November 17.
“The professors told us that the university administration decided not to allow girls to participate in the ceremony, because there were lots of male students present,” a student from the faculty of engineering tells Zan Times.
He adds: “There were two women in our faculty whose achievements should have been acknowledged, but they were not allowed to even attend the event.”
A high-achieving female student who was deprived of attending the ceremony tells Zan Times, that the decision was clear prejudice. “The purpose of their discriminatory policy is to discourage women from pursuing higher education,” she says.
A source within Kandahar University says that more than 25 distinguished female students deserved to be honoured but couldn’t because of their sex.
This latest discriminatory policy by the Taliban follows on the heels of their order closing secondary and high schools for girls and imposing clothing restrictions on female students, including wearing black clothes and burqa. Last month, the Taliban prevented female students from entering Badakhshan University who were not wearing black burqas and niqabs. When female students protested this decision, the Taliban violently suppressed their peaceful demonstration.
In addition, the Taliban is sharply limiting what fields women can study at university. Recently, when the latest group of high school graduates in 33 provinces took entrance exams containing fields determined by the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education, they discovered that the Taliban had removed journalism, economics, agriculture, veterinary medicine, and engineering from the list of elective fields for girls in their first entrance exam.
More than a dozen programs were removed from the girls’ selection form at Kandahar University, according to a source who spoke to Zan Times under the condition of anonymity. The source explains that “13 fields have been eliminated, including law and political science, computer science, journalism, public administration, engineering, economics, mining exploration, and agriculture, leaving girls with only medicine, education, and sharia.”
