An official from the education sector confirmed the figure after indicating that the events occurred over the weekend in the north of the country. At this time, the minors are recovering in care centers. In parallel, it is believed to be the first aggression of this type since the Taliban regained power in 2021. Since then, the repression against women has intensified in a nation where they are prohibited from accessing secondary education and the labor market, among other violations of their human rights.
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The denial of fundamental rights is a tragedy experienced daily by millions of women and girls in Afghanistan. This time around 100 people, including 80 girls, were victims of poisoning, in what would be a response to their attempt to access education.
According to the provincial information director, Mufti Ameer, quoted by the EFE Agency, the attack occurred when unknown persons sprayed a poison in the classrooms of two schools, while the girls attended classes.
As a result, they all presented respiratory problems and nausea, symptoms with which they arrived at a nearby hospital, he said. Ameer.
The events occurred in the province of Sar-e-Pul, in the north of the country. At least 60 of the female students were poisoned at the Naswan-e-Kabod Aab school and another 17 at the Naswan-e-Faizabad education center.
“Both primary schools are close to each other (…) We transferred the students to the hospital and now they are all fine,” said the director of the provincial education department Mohammad Rahmani.
Among those affected are also three teachers, a professor, two janitors and a father.
An education official was quoted by the US news agency ‘Associated Press’ as saying that the person who orchestrated the poisoning had a “personal grudge”, while the authorities investigate who was behind the attacks and what substance would have been used.
This is believed to be the first time such an attack has taken place since the Taliban retook power in August 2021, amid the withdrawal of US troops after 20 years in the country, followed by the rest. of the military corps of the western allies.
Afghan girls and women are victims of “war crimes”
Since they returned to power nearly two years ago, the Taliban Islamist movement has sown terror while it resumes its repression of the rights and freedoms of women and girls in Afghanistan.
For them, education after the sixth grade is prohibited, so they cannot access university and women cannot access most jobs or public spaces.
A tragedy and a violation of rights that is accompanied by violence and different types of aggression against those who try to evade the impositions.
In fact, a report from International Amnesty and the International Commission of Juristsreleased on May 26, reports on the Taliban’s draconian restrictions, which include arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, imprisonment and torture.
Given the findings, the two organizations asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to investigate the Taliban regime for the probable crime against humanity of gender-based persecution.
Women’s rights in Afghanistan have varied throughout history. Although they achieved equality in the 1964 Constitution, these rights were taken from them in the 1990s with the civil war and the rise to power of the Taliban fundamentalist groups between 1996 and 2001., year in which they were expelled after the invasion of the United States troops and their Western allies.
But the most expensive war in history did not manage to make the Taliban movement disappear, much less its ideology.
And after two decades absent from power due to the Western military presence in Afghan territory, they have re-emerged.
From their earlier period of dominance they imposed strict Islamist rules for women such as a ban on speaking loudly in public, traveling outside their homes without a blood relative, showing any part of their body or leaning out of balconies.
Many were flogged or stoned for breaching any of their rules. A daily horror that now spreads with the return of the political-religious and extremist movement that seeks to impose a radical Islamic regime with the application of the sharia, the basis of Islam.
With Reuters and AP
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