KABUL: Male and female students and lecturers took to the streets of the Afghan capital on Thursday to protest a ban on women attending college classes, the latest blow to their rights by the Taliban-run administration.

The Ministry of Higher Education announced on Tuesday university access for women was “postponed until further notice,” with immediate effect. Students who showed up for classes and exams after the announcement were turned away by security forces who blocked the gates of campuses across the country.

As the move drew condemnation from the United Nations as well as international organizations and foreign governments who called on the Taliban to revisit the decision, dozens of male and female students and lecturers also gathered in front of the Kabul University gate.

While security forces soon removed male protesters from the site, the women remained, chanting “Education for all,” and carrying banners saying “All or no one,” “Education is our right,” and “Education, work, freedom.”

The Taliban have introduced a series of restrictions on women, including on their clothing and choice of profession, since coming to power in August 2021. Secondary school girls were already barred from school, but the ban on university and college classes is a final blow to women’s place in Afghan public life, and is likely to complicate the Taliban administration's efforts to gain international recognition and get rid of sanctions severely hampering the economy

“We saw the Taliban standing at every gate and at every corner of the university and they were preventing the girls from entering,” Karishma Nazari, a second-year economics student at a private university in Kabul, told Arab News.

“We were told that we don’t have the right to work, go out and study. We were again told to return home.”

Afghan women participate in a protest against the university education ban for women, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on December 22, 2022. (AP)

Hussna Sarwari said she was going to sit for a final year exam when the ban came into force.

“We had high hopes,” she said. “When schools were closed for girls, our only hope was the universities … This right was also taken away from us.”

 

“Every day there is a new order, every day there is a new ban. Tomorrow, they will issue such an order that girls would not even have the right to breathe ... We have no more hope left.”

Male students at several campuses across the country also walked out of classes on Wednesday in solidarity, while at least 16 male professors at top universities publicly announced their resignations.

“Preventing girls from studying and progressing is one of the most illogical decisions announced by the Taliban. With this decision, they have angered all the people of Afghanistan,” Farimah Nikkhwa, a Kabul-based rights activist, told Arab News.

Her and other advocates are now hoping international pressure will make the Taliban revisit their decisions.

Western nations including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, as well as Muslim countries Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, have already condemned the ban and urged the Taliban to revisit their decision.

“Women and girls in Afghan society have been deprived of their basic rights of going to schools and universities,” another advocate, Mahjuba Habibi, said. “We are urging the international community to not allow the group to make the future generation face the darkness.”