Five young women who are part of a famous Afghan robotics team – which symbolized opportunities for women and girls in a post-Taliban Afghanistan – have arrived in Mexico as part of the first group of evacuees to land there.
“They will be received with great affection by the people of Mexico,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said at a news conference at Mexico City’s international airport late Tuesday. “They are bearers of a dream: to show that we can have an egalitarian, fraternal and gender-equal world.”
Mr Ebrard has led Mexico’s efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover this month, breaking through a typically lengthy immigration process to provide immediate protection. A group of Afghans who worked with their families for NewsMadura also arrived safely in Mexico on Wednesday.
Footage shared by the State Department showed the group, including the robotic team arriving aboard a Lufthansa plane and being greeted by Mexican officials. Some young women, all wearing masks because of the pandemic, put their hands on their hearts and nodded their heads as they disembarked.
According to a statement from the State Department, an unnamed institution in Mexico has provided shelter, food and basic amenities to the young women.
Other team members had fled to Qatar earlier this week and some remained in Afghanistan, according to a statement from the team’s founder, Afghan tech entrepreneur Roya Mahboob.
Ms Mahboob said those left behind faced a worrisome future under the Taliban, which banned girls’ education when the group last ruled the country.
The young women were part of a robotics team that gained international attention in 2017 when they were denied a visa to the United States for a competition in Washington.
Members of Congress signed a petition and President Donald J. Trump intervened to get them travel documents on humanitarian grounds. Once back in Afghanistan, they were received as icons of progress, although some accused them of dressing indecently abroad and said they had jeopardized their prospects of marriage.
