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Indian politicians and journalists have criticized the government for failing to speak after women’s journalists were excluded from a press conference with Afghan Foreign Minister in Delhi.
About 16 male reporters were selected to attend a forum on Friday with Foreign Minister Amir Han Mutaki at the Afghan Embassy. Journalists are watching that women and foreign media are rejected.
However, Zay Takel, a member of the delegation and spokesman for the Taliban government, denied that someone was rejected and said that “all journalists who came to the embassy were allowed to participate.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MEA) said it “does not” participate in the interaction in the press “at the Afghan Embassy.
A source in the Taliban government acknowledged that women were not invited to attend.
They told the BBC that “Women journalists are excluded due to a lack of appropriate coordination and will be invited to the next conference if they are held in Delhi.”
Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said, allowing the event to move forward, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi “tells every woman in India that you are too weak to stand up for them.”
The Guild of India’s editors strongly condemned the exclusion and said: “Whether the MEA coordinates the event, it is deeply worried that such discriminatory exclusion is allowed to continue without objection.”
He calls on the government of India to “publicly confirm that access to the seal of diplomatic events held in India must observe the justice of gender.”
Muttaqi is in India for a week of high -level talks with the government. On Friday, he met with Jaishankar Foreign Minister, who announced that India would reopen his embassy in Kabul. He was closed after the Taliban returned to power.
Since 2021, the Taliban government has imposed numerous restrictions in accordance with their interpretation of the Islamic Sharia law, which seriously influenced the rights of Afghan women and girls.
After the event only for men, Rahul Gandhi said on social media: “In our country, women have the right to equal in any space.”
Indian politician Priyanka Gandhi Vadra asked Modi to clarify his position on “removing women’s journalists” from gathering.
She asked how “this insult for some of the most competent women in India” was allowed in “a country whose woman is his spine and his pride.”
Others expressed shock and said that the men who went to the event had to go in solidarity with their colleagues.
“Why did our emasculated business trips stay in the room?” The politician Mahua Moitra wrote on social media.
She added: “The government has discouraged every Indian woman, allowing the Minister of Taliban to exclude women’s journalists from Presser. A shameful bunch of invertebrate hypocrites.”
