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Silenced voices: The high cost of dissent under the Taliban regime
Ferdows Andishmand*authored this report for the Zan Times in Persian, and it was translated into English by Rustam Seerat.
Farhad* was a sixth-semester dental student at Kabul Medical University when he was arrested by the Taliban in November 2022. He had joined other student activists, as well as university professors, located inside and outside Afghanistan in taking to social media to criticize the Taliban when they banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade and then forbade them from attending any educational facility.
“A leadership that has lived in the dark holes and terrorist bases of Pakistan will certainly not allow the children of Afghanistan to study. Therefore, the people must rise and claim their rights. Education is the right of all humans, as Islam and the Quran have called people to education. Remember, rights are not given; they are taken,” Farhad wrote on social media.
His messages were popular, with other critics adding their own angry messages in his comments. Farhad’s trouble began when someone following his online accounts reported him to the Taliban. He was arrested on campus one November afternoon. “Two men in civilian clothes came to our college and asked me…
