Malala Yousafzai asks Taliban to free Afghan education activist Matiullah Wesa
Pakistan’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousuf Zaihas urged the Taliban government to release an education activist, Matiullah Wesa, who was recently arrested in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
Wesa was running mobile schools and libraries in Afghanistan. Provide education to both boys and girls.His detention is even more worrisome for Malala.
An education lawyer who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban in 2012, spoke out against Visa’s arrest, calling it an attack on education. Malala’s call for Visa’s release highlights the ongoing struggle for the right to education in Afghanistan, particularly for girls and young women under the Taliban.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Malala criticized the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education and the arrest of an education champion like Wasa. He urged the Taliban to release him and all those imprisoned for teaching children.
According to Visa’s brother, the 30-year-old education worker had been receiving threats for some time due to his activities. Education of Afghan girls Under his organization PenPath. His home was also reportedly raided during his arrest, although the government did not provide details of the incident.
Wesa was one of Afghanistan’s most prominent education activists, campaigning for girls’ right to education since the Taliban banned women’s education in 2021. On the day of her arrest, she tweeted a photo of female Penn Path volunteers demanding Islamic rights. Educating your daughters
Wasa was reportedly stopped by a group of men in two vehicles after finishing prayers at a mosque. According to her brother, when she asked them for an identity card, they beat her and forcibly took her away.
Afghanistan remains a challenging environment for women and girls, where many still face discrimination, violence and limited access to modern education and employment opportunities.
AFP added: The organization Matiullah founded – which campaigns for schools and distributes books in rural areas – has long communicated the importance of girls’ education to village elders. Dedicated to
Since the ban on girls’ secondary schools, Visa has continued to visit remote areas to garner support from local people.
“We are counting the hours, minutes and seconds to open girls’ schools. The damage caused by the closure of schools is irreparable and undeniable,” he tweeted at the start of the new school year in Afghanistan last week.
“We have held meetings with local people and if the schools remain closed, we will continue our protest.”
The Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 after the withdrawal of US and NATO forces backing the previous regime.
Taliban leaders – who have also banned women from university – have repeatedly claimed they will reopen schools for girls once certain conditions are met.
They say they lack funds and time to restructure the curriculum on Islamic lines.
Taliban officials made similar assurances during their first term in power from 1996 to 2001, but no girls’ schools opened in five years.
The order against girls’ education is believed to have been ordered by Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and his ultra-conservative aides, who are deeply skeptical of modern education — especially for women.
As well as sparking international outrage, it has drawn criticism from within the movement, with some high-ranking officials in the Kabul government as well as many rank-and-file members opposed to the decision.
In deeply conservative and patriarchal Afghanistan, attitudes toward girls’ education are slowly changing in rural areas, where the benefits are being recognized.