An Afghan-Hazara girl wins a gold medal at Gujarat University
Razia Muradi, a 27-year-old Afghan-Hazara girl, won the gold medal from Gujarat University in Bharat for her brilliant academic performance in her master’s degree in public administration. The Governor of the state of Gujarat, Bharat, presented this award to Ms. Razia Muradi in a ceremony at the university of this state.
Two years ago, in February 2021, Razia Muradi went to Bharat with a scholarship and started her studies at Gujarat State University. At the end of her studies, she obtained a “GPA” of 8.60, which was the highest grade point average in this university, and for this reason, she was recognized as entitled to receive a gold medal from the university.
Ms. Razia, who left the country a few months before the Taliban entered Afghanistan, has not been able to return to Afghanistan even to visit her family in the past two years. In her speech after receiving this award, she said that she was worried about her family’s safety in Afghanistan and expressed her sadness that they could not be with her on such a day.
In an interview with BBC World News, Muradi said that because of her interest in administration and policy-making, she chose the field of study, “Public Administration,” and hopes to make a change in the Afghan government system to promote public welfare. Razia Muradi has now started her doctoral studies in public administration at the same university. “Right now, there is no clear future for me in Afghanistan, but it will be an honor for me to return to my country and work for its development,
” she said.
Razia is a girl from the Hazara tribe, considered among the ethnic and religious minorities in Afghanistan. Hazaras in Afghanistan have been the target of the most organized terrorist attacks due to their religious and ethnic differences. Most of the bloody attacks of ISIS and Taliban in recent years have targeted educational and cultural centers, civil marches, and gatherings for the Hazaras’ lawsuit in Afghanistan.
After the return of the Taliban group to power in Afghanistan, even though this group closed girls’ schools for girls above the sixth grade, some schools continued to operate, especially in Hazara areas.
One of these educational centers, where hundreds of teenage girls attended classes to prepare for entrance exams, was the Kaaj educational center in the Hazara area of Dasht-e Barchi, west of Kabul. This educational center was the target of a horrific suicide attack in the summer of 2022, in which more than a hundred students, most of whom were girls, were killed.
Now, after one year and seven months of Taliban rule over Afghanistan, no woman is allowed to study in secondary school, high school, or university and not participate in political and social activities.
