About two dozen women activists protested outside Afghanistan's women's ministry on Sunday after it was closed by Taliban officials in power in Kabul and replaced by their Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
Female staff said they had been trying to return to work at the ministry for several weeks since the Taliban takeover last month, only to be told to go home.
The sign outside the Ministry of Women's Affairs has been replaced by one for the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
“The Ministry of Women's Affairs must be reactivated,” said Baseera Tawana, one of the protesters outside the building. “The removal of women means the removal of human beings.”
When Taliban Islamists were in power from 1996-2001, girls were not allowed to attend school and women were banned from work and education.
During that period, the Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice became known as the group's moral police, enforcing its interpretation of Sharia that includes a strict dress code and public executions and floggings.
The protest came a day after some girls returned to primary schools with gender-segregated classes, but older girls faced an anxious wait with no clarity over if and when they would be able to resume their studies.
“You cannot suppress the voice of Afghan women by keeping girls at home and restricting them, as well as by not allowing them to go to school,” said protester Taranum Sayeedi.
“The women of Afghanistan today are not the women of 26 years ago.”
The protest lasted for about 10 minutes. After a short verbal confrontation with a man, the women got into cars and left, as Taliban in two cars observed from nearby. Over the past months, Taliban fighters broke up several women’s protests by force.
Taliban officials have said they will not return to their fundamentalist policies, including the ban on girls receiving an education.
Kabul municipality to female workers: Stay home
Meanwhile, the interim mayor of Afghanistan’s capital said on Sunday that female employees in the Kabul city government had been told to stay home, with work only allowed for those who could not be replaced by men.
About 30 women, many of them young, held a news conference in a basement of a home tucked away in a Kabul neighbourhood. Marzia Ahmadi, a rights activist and government employee now forced to sit at home, said they would demand the Taliban re-open public spaces to women.
“It’s our right,” she said. “We want to talk to them. We want to tell them that we have the same rights as they have.”
Most of the participants said they would try to leave the country if they had an opportunity.
Witnesses, meanwhile, said an explosion targeted a Taliban vehicle in the eastern provincial city of Jalalabad, and hospital officials said five people were killed in the second such deadly blast in as many days in the militant Islamic State (IS) group stronghold.
The Taliban and IS extremists are enemies and fought each other even before the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan last month.