Afghan girls denied visa for robotics competition
Afghan girls refused visas to the US for a robot-building competition said they were mystified by the decision, as the contest’s organisers said teams from Iran and Sudan as well as a de facto Syrian team had gained visas.
The unusual story of the Afghan all-girl team of robotics students emerged as the US grapples with the legality of President Donald Trump’s order to temporarily ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries.
Afghanistan itself is not on the list and Team Afghanistan’s robot, unlike its creators, has been allowed entry to the US. Asked by Reuters on Tuesday why the girls were banned, a US state department spokesperson cited regulations prohibiting the agency from discussing individual visa cases. So the six team members will watch the ball-sorting machine compete in Washington DC via video link during the July 16-18 event from their hometown of Herat, according to the FIRST Global contest organizers.
“We still don’t know the reason why we were not granted visas, because other countries participating in the competition have been given visas,” said 14-year-old Fatemah Qaderyan, part of the team that made two journeys to the US embassy in Kabul to apply for their papers.
“No one knows about the future but ... we did our best and we hope that our robot could get a position along other robots from other countries,” Qaderyan said.
Most of the female team members were either infants or not yet born at the time of the US-backed military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 that ousted the Taliban.