One of the most common questions while reporting on conflicts or a threat-posing circumstance consists of asking the interviewer, ‘Can I name you in the story?’ Over the past few weeks, as Afghanistan’s Taliban government dismantled women’s right to education campus after campus, WION reached out to a number of Afghan women living under Taliban’s anti-women tyranny.
Every interview began with one common question, ‘Can I name you in the story?’
Almost all Afghan women insisted to be named despite WION offering them anonymity for their safety under Taliban’s rule; a formidable sign of resistance against Afghanistan’s repressive regime.
Dr Sona, a doctor from Kabul who was denied job shortly before Taliban’s ruling that women could no more be treated by male doctors, insisted to be named. So did Bahisht, a Kandahar-born medical student, and Nargis, a school teacher from Jalalabad; and Sana Siddiqui, a law student from Jalalabad— all voiced themselves out to WION with their real identities.
About 3800 miles northwest of Kabul, in Austria’s Vienna — the city that lends its name to the most important of all international relations documents in the form of ‘Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations’ — the sentiment of voicing out identifiable resistance against Taliban-led government found resonance among hundreds of Afghan demonstrators who were gathered near State Opera House on Saturday.
When the same question was posed to Seoorai Khan, 27, an Afghan national facing threat to his life back home, he immediately said with a remarkable gleam of defiance: “We cannot ask for change in hiding. Whatever we have to say against the Taliban, we must say it out in the open.”
Khan was among scores of Afghan nationals demonstrating against Taliban’s anti-women rulings in Vienna on Saturday.
Message for Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) delegation
On January 13, Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the 57-member states group of Islamic countries, said that Afghanistan’s ban on women from pursuing education or working in the aid agencies is “in violation of the purposes of Islamic law and the methodology of the messenger of Allah”. A day later, the OIC announced that it will soon send a delegation to Afghanistan to discuss women’s rights to education and employment with the country’s current rulers.
The protesters in Vienna expected the OIC to assuredly voice out that Afghan women should be able to resume the pursuit of their education.
“We expect the OIC to tell them (the Taliban) that the world is a global village. The rights to pursue education and work that empower women in any Islamic country should be given to Afghan women as well,” Seoorai Khan told WION in a video call from the site of Vienna’s anti-Taliban demonstration on January 14.
“There will be no one left in Afghanistan to run the system if this continues. You will just see the turban-clad, beard-stroking men,” Khan added, while referring to the Taliban’s way of repression of rights, which has pushed many youngsters in recent months to flee the country, often by desperate means.
‘We will not leave Afghan women alone’
For Fauzia Ahmadzay, 27, like millions of Afghans away from Afghanistan at the current moment of repression, saying that ongoing events in Afghanistan are ‘devastating’ would be an understatement.
“It’s heartbreaking to see the girls crying in front of schools and helplessly saying ‘we want to have education, we want to have our right for education to build our lives’,” Fauzia told WION from the protest site in a video call.
“Why is the world neglecting this?,” she asked.
“Why is the world just standing by and looking at us and doing nothing?”
Fauzia mentioned that in Austria, many organisations are coming together to express solidarity with Afghan people. But this is not the case elsewhere, in the rest of the world.
“The western powers and America who started these conflicts in Afghanistan, they are not saying now that Afghan women are just like European women. That they also have their choices,” Fauzia said.
“It’s heartbreaking that Afghans are always alone. Nobody is standing behind us to say that we are standing with you, and we can raise our voice together,” she added.
“But I want to tell Afghan women that they are not alone. Every revolution starts with raised voices and by being aware about what is happening around us. It will get better. We won’t give up.”
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