The co-founder of the lone all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan has set fire to all documents of her students seeking to protect them and their families amidst the renewed fears of persecution of women in the country following the takeover by the Taliban.
Sharing a series of tweets and a video of burning down the records, Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the principal of the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA), said her aim was not to erase them but to protect students and their families from the Taliban.
In March 2002, after the fall of Taliban, thousands of Afghan girls were invited to go to the nearest public school to participate in a placement test because the Taliban had burned all female students’ records to erase their existence. I was one of those girls.
— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021
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“Nearly 20 years later, as the founder of the only all-girls boarding school in Afghanistan, I’m burning my students’ records not to erase them, but to protect them and their families,” she tweeted.
In her tweet, Rasikh said that while the world focused on those Afghans who were managing to get out, she was working to ensure the education of girls who have no way out of the war-torn country.
As the world focuses on the dramatic – those Afghans who are managing to get out – the fire in me to invest in the education of Afghan girls who have no way out grows brighter, stronger, and louder.
— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021
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“My students, colleagues and I are safe with enormous gratitude to our ever vibrant global village. The time to appropriately express my gratitude will come. But right now, there are many who aren’t or increasingly don’t feel safe. I’m broken & devastated for them,” Shabana Basij-Rasikh said in her tweets.
She further said that she was only putting out this statement and showing the videos to reassure families of theirs and their children’s safety. “As I focus on the safety and well-being of my students, I don’t plan on making any further comments,” she said.
I’m making this statement to mainly reassure the families of our students whose records we burned and our supporters of our safety. As I focus on the safety and well-being of my students, I don’t plan on making any further comments.
— Shabana Basij-Rasikh (@sbasijrasikh) August 20, 2021
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She also posted a link seeking donations for her school, SOLA (School of Leadership Afghanistan).
Ever since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, there has been a surge in violence against women, particularly young girls, as the Jihadist outfit intends to use them as their sex slaves.
Door-to-door hunt for girls as young as 12, Taliban looking for sex slaves
Earlier, there were reports that the Taliban gangs are targeting children as young as 12 during their hunt for sex slaves since they took over Afghanistan. Women and girls are among the most at-risk Afghanis under the new Islamist regime after the Jihadist organisation launched a door-to-door search for sex slaves.
From demanding lists of women and girls in different regions to forcing marriages on young girls, reports of the Taliban’s atrocities are making headlines. The unmarried and widowed women and girls between the ages of 12 to 45 are termed as “qhanimat” or spoils of the war by the Taliban. They are reportedly being divided among the members of the group.
According to Shukria Barakzai, Afghan politician and journalist, the stories of the Taliban’s atrocities against women and girls are horrifying. She wrote in The Daily Mail, “The gouging of a woman’s eyes in front of her terrified family; girls as young as 12 wrenched from the arms of their weeping mothers to become sex slaves for Taliban ‘warriors’; men punished or even killed for ‘offences’ as simple as listening to the ‘wrong’ music, or for daring to be ‘educated’,”
She further said that in some villages, Taliban members conducted door-to-door searches looking for young girls to forcibly marrying them and pushing them into a life of sex slaves. She added, “So determined are they that no virgin will escape their clutches that they check drawers, wardrobes and even suitcases in homes where desperate mothers deny they have young daughters to ensure they are telling the truth.”
It was reported that an Afghan woman was set on fire by Talibanis for “bad cooking”, and many others are being forced into sex slavery.
