This is a symbolic first: France welcomes, this Monday, September 4, a handful of Afghan women threatened by the Taliban and exiled in neighboring Pakistan. They are for the moment five, including one accompanied by three children, and must land in the afternoon at the Parisian airport of Roissy. It has now been several months since they fled the Taliban regime which regained power in Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. These Afghan women are not the only ones to be threatened.
2 mins
With our correspondent in Islamabad, Sonia Ghezali
It has been more than a year since Nasrin Shirzad took refuge in Pakistan. This journalist and human rights activist worked for more than 15 years for Tolo News, the first television news channel in Afghanistan. The return of the Taliban to power in August 2021 forced her to leave her country.
” We have always produced reports on the taliban, about their injustice, about the way they treat women and girls. We are in great danger. They hunt down journalists there, torture them, kill them. After encountering many difficulties and receiving threats, I was able to leave Afghanistan and find refuge in Pakistan “, she explains.
Afghanistan: “I feel like I’m in prison and my crime is being a woman”
With her journalist husband and their three children, the life of refugees without legal status in Pakistan is difficult, she confides: “ We can’t stay here because my children can’t get an education. Because we are not allowed to go to school, there is no access to employment for us. We have no income here. »
Nasrin Shirzad fears deportation to Afghanistan. She asked for a visa for France, but this request remained unanswered for the moment.
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