Wesa, the director of the Pen Path organization and an “advocate for girls’ education,” was detained in Kabul on Monday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan tweeted. In a country where the education of girls is an extremely sensitive issue, he called on the authorities to “clarify her whereabouts, the reasons for her detention and guarantee her access to legal representation and contact with her family.”
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where education for girls after primary school is prohibited. The Taliban authorities, who returned to power in August 2021, have banned girls from secondary education and have also denied women the right to study at university. The Taliban government cited several reasons for this, including that women, who should ideally wear full-length hijabs covering their entire bodies and faces, were poorly dressed. He also explained that these institutions would be reopened to them once an Islamic curriculum had been developed.
Contacted by the AFP agency about the arrest, the Taliban authorities have not yet responded. Matiullah Wesa’s brother confirmed his arrest, saying he was arrested as he was leaving a mosque after prayers on Monday night. “Matiullah had finished his prayers and was leaving the mosque when he was stopped by two men in two vehicles,” said Samiullah Wesa.
For Samiullah, his brother was arrested for his work in the education sector. “He never worked with anyone else, not even the previous government. He only worked for Pen Path,” he insisted. “When Matiullah asked them for his identity papers, they beat him and took him away by force”
This 30-year-old man, an activist for the education of Afghans and Afghans, is the founder and president of the organization Pen Path. Despite the ban on secondary schools for girls, he continues to travel to remote areas to rally the support of the local population and promote the importance of girls’ education. “We are counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until girls’ schools open,” he tweeted last week, at the start of the new school year in Afghanistan. His organization has created 18 libraries and launched a book distribution campaign in an attempt to make people in rural areas literate.
In early February, an Afghan university professor was also detained by the Taliban after condemning his country’s ban on women studying. He was finally released after 32 days in captivity. Ismail Mashal, a veteran journalism professor, caused a storm when he tore up his diplomas on television in December to protest an order banning women from higher education.
The order against girls’ education appears to have been issued by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and his ultra-conservative aides who are deeply skeptical of modern education, especially for women. Since returning to power, the Taliban authorities, with their austere interpretation of Islam, have intensified crackdowns on women’s rights, gradually removing them from public life.
