Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Afghan activists for women's rights opened a library in Kabul on Wednesday. They hope it will be a sa...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Afghan activists for women's rights opened a library in Kabul on Wednesday. They hope it will be a safe place for women who are being shut out of education and public life by the Taliban, who are in power.
Since the Islamist Taliban took over Afghanistan a year ago, they have said that women should not leave the house without a male relative and that they should cover their faces. Some women in cities don't follow this rule, though.
After the Taliban broke their promise to open secondary schools for girls in March, most of them are still closed.
Zhulia Parsi, one of the library's founders, said, "We opened the library for two reasons: for girls who can't go to school and for women who lost their jobs and have nothing to do."
Reuters asked a Taliban spokesman for a comment, but the person did not answer right away.
There are more than 1,000 books in the library, including fiction and nonfiction books about politics, economics, and science. The Crystal Bayat Foundation, an Afghan women's rights group, helped set up the library. Most of the books were given by teachers, poets, and authors.
Several women's rights activists who have been protesting in the past few months also helped set up the library in a rented store in a mall with a lot of stores for women.
In March, the Taliban broke a promise to open high schools for girls. International development agencies say that the growing restrictions and Afghanistan's economic crisis have made it so that most teenage girls can't go to school and that thousands of women have been forced out of the workforce.
The Taliban say that, based on their understanding of Islamic law, they respect the rights of women and that, since March, they have been working on a way to open high schools for girls.
Western governments are getting more angry about how the Taliban are getting rid of more and more women from public life. Many Afghan women have complained about the Taliban and asked that their rights be respected.
At the opening of the library, a woman's rights activist named Mahjoba Habibi said, "They can't wipe us out of society. If they wipe us out in one field, we'll keep going in another."
