It was the afternoon of March 27, which coincided with the fifth day of Ramadan, a holy month for Muslims. Several vehicles carrying gunmen arrived at a mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, and arrested 30-year-old Matiullah Wesa, a well-known education activist. This Thursday, his brother Attaullah Wesa announced the release of the activist, who has been detained for seven months without the authorities of the Islamic Emirate, appointed by the Taliban, having clarified what he was accused of, according to the family. A Taliban spokesman limited himself to justifying the arrest on March 29 with “illegal activities.” During all this time, calls for his release grew from all over the world.
Sources close to the case confirmed to this newspaper at the beginning of October that the prisoner had already been brought to court four times, although the Sharia (Islamic law)-based judiciary had not made a verdict. According to the family, he was not allowed to have a defense attorney in any case.
“We have not received a direct response from the authorities,” Attaullah Wesa said in a telephone conversation in October. “They also did not tell the family the information that is normally shared about a prisoner,” he added from outside Afghanistan, where he is seeking refuge after authorities tried to arrest him too. “He didn’t commit a crime. The secret service prepared reports containing false accusations about him and sent them to the court. They even made him sign with his fingerprint while blindfolded. He was forced to make false confessions,” denounces Ataullah. EL PAÍS tried unsuccessfully to obtain information about the case from the Afghan authorities.
The Taliban have imposed a regime of terror on all forms of opposition, including those demanding human rights. In September, human rights defenders Zhoila Parsi and Neda Parwani were arrested along with several of their family members. In light of this “arbitrary detention,” “I urge the Taliban to release her immediately and unconditionally,” Richard Bennett, United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the country, claimed on his X account (formerly Twitter) on September 29. Afghanistan. The UN had already asked the Kabul regime for explanations on the detention of Matiullah Wesa.
The two Wesa brothers founded the NGO Pen Path in 2009, which advocates for Afghans’ right to education, particularly in remote areas of Afghanistan, even where Taliban power has traditionally prevailed. Its activities have been particularly complicated since the Islamic Emirate was founded in August 2021 after two decades of foreign military occupation. The following month, this dictatorship banned the education of women over the age of 12 in a case that was unique in the world.
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Activist Matiullah Wesa was photographed in Spin Boldak in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan on August 11, 2022. Luis De Vega Hernandez
Pen Path’s initiatives include secret schools to counter this veto on women’s education, libraries, mobile schools or campaigns to break the burden of tradition and sensitize families to the need for girls to go to school too. EL PAÍS was able to accompany the founder of the NGO last year to check the impact of these mobile schools in Spin Boldak, a city in the Kandahar region of Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan. “Education belongs to the people, not the Taliban or the government,” Wesa defended at the time.
Matiullah Wesa was held in the capital’s Pul-e-Charki prison after passing through the cells of the secret service, whose agents arrested him. His relatives were occasionally given permission to visit him. The doors of this penitentiary, the largest in the country, were opened by the Taliban to free its inmates as soon as they returned to power. Many of the inmates at the time were Taliban prisoners who were imprisoned during the country’s two-decade military occupation by foreign troops. In recent months, activists such as Wesa, journalists, human rights defenders and generally all kinds of opponents of the emirate’s dictatorship have ended up in the Pul-e-Charki cells.
An Afghan refugee, who was part of the power structure until the arrival of the Taliban and had to flee despite having ties to the counterweights of internal power, believed that the Wesa case was a hot potato in the hands of the Afghan authorities. He understood that if anything had happened to the activist, it would have had a negative impact on the regime both internally and externally. The family made no secret of the fact that from the beginning the emirate had tried to suppress the media presence of the case.
Secret schools continue to operate
“It is very difficult to see someone in prison who is the president of our organization and with whom you have worked for years. It is very difficult to work without his presence,” commented one of the NGO’s employees earlier this month. In any case, Pen Path has continued these months despite the imprisonment of its founder, as its team is “threatened” and “some of the activities are restricted,” said the same source, describing these activities as “the fight for our cause.” Pen Path continues to speak to tribal leaders, although not as before, and maintains contacts with the Afghan diaspora and other Afghans to resolve this issue,” he added in written answers, asking not to reveal his identity.
Ataullah Wesa explains that they have managed to maintain secret and mobile schools that reach villages without schools using a motorcycle equipped with a solar panel to generate electricity. Around the vehicle, in the middle of dusty esplanades, boys and girls attend classes. In recent years, the NGO has managed to create 46 new schools and reopen a hundred in 16 of the country’s 34 provinces, some of them in the areas most affected by the war.
Various international organizations and human rights organizations had called for Wesa’s release. Actress and humanitarian activist Angelina Jolie wrote him a letter in August: “I humbly join with all those calling for his release so that he can continue his important work and lift all restrictions on girls’ education.” Jolie also appealed to support her more than 14 million followers on Instagram, Wesa and Pen Path. Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist and 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner who was shot dead by the Taliban in 2012 because, like Wesa, she defended the right to education, called for her release as soon as she learned of her arrest.
“Today marks six months since the Taliban arbitrarily arrested education activist Matiullah Wesa simply because he was protesting against the ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan,” Amnesty International recalled on September 27 on the social network. He had been campaigning for his release since March.
It is important that the world knows about the case, explained Ataullah Wesa, “but we have not received help from any organization, neither in the past nor in the present,” he lamented. “It is clear that the work and activities of Matiullah Wesa and Pen Path are clear and well known. And also that Wesa is one of the best examples of how the country’s human rights depend on it,” defended his brother.
“His crime? “A long career of working to ensure that all children in Afghanistan receive an education,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) women’s rights officer Heather Barr tweeted last July, referring to the arrest of Matiullah Wesa. “The damage of the Taliban’s war on education will be felt for generations to come,” he added. Wesa’s last tweet was from March 26, the day before her arrest. In a video, a group of volunteers from the NGO Pen Path can be seen holding cardboard banners demanding the right to female education. In the text, the activist wrote: “Men, women, old people, young people, everyone, from all parts of the country, are demanding the Islamic right to educate their daughters.”
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