A group of women held a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Kabul on Thursday to support women in Iran, chanting “women, life, freedom” and “women in Iran and Afghanistan will not bow to imprisonment.”
The women who are already faced with increasing restrictions by the Taliban also chanted that “Iran has stood up and now it’s our turn.”
But according to multiple sources, the protest was disturbed by Taliban firing soon after it started on Thursday morning.
The protest in Kabul was hailed by Iranian women who said it was a courageous move to hold rally in Kabul under Taliban rule.
“For me, the gathering by Afghanistan’s women in front of the Iranian embassy is more valuable than all other international support (to the protests in Iran),” an Iranian activist Atefeh Nabavi said on Twitter.
“These women know very well the meaning of force and insult the (Taliban) government imposes on them. We, too, know very well that women’s protests under Taliban rule against the Iranian government are never less than fighting on Iran streets,” she added.
It was one of the few protests Afghan women held after the Taliban takeover on August 2021. Every time they have taken to streets to advocate for their rights, they have been suppressed.
Mahsa Amini, 22, from the northwestern Kurdish city of Saqez, was arrested on Sept. 13 in Tehran for “unsuitable attire” by the morality police of Iran that enforce the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.
Amini died three days later in hospital after falling into a coma, sparking the first big show of opposition on Iran’s streets since authorities crushed protests against a rise in gasoline prices in 2019.
Reports from different news agencies show that at least 50 people have been killed in Iran protests over the last two weeks.
