After closing secondary schools for girls, the obligation to wear the full veil and their exclusion from most public jobs, women also have a ban on going to the parks and gardens of the Afghan capital .
Le Monde with AFP
The Taliban authorities announced, Sunday, November 13, the ban on Afghan women to access gymnasiums and public baths, shortly after they were excluded from the parks and gardens of the capital.
“Sports rooms are closed to women because their coaches were men and some [rooms] were mixed,” said the spokesman for the Ministry of Vice Prevention and Promotion of Virtue , Mohammad Akif Sadeq Muhajir.
He added that the “hammams”, public baths where traditionally men and women are separated, are also prohibited from the latter. “Currently, each house has a bathroom, so this is no problem for women” to wash, he said.
A video clip circulating on social media – which could not be checked immediately – shows a group of women, back to the camera, deploring the ban on gym. “It is a gym reserved for women; teachers and coaches are all women,” deplores one of them. “You cannot ban us from everything,” adds the young woman, the voice broken by emotion.
additional restriction of the rights and freedoms of women
Despite their promises to be more flexible when they returned to power in August 2021, the Taliban returned to the ultra-rigorous interpretation of Islam which had marked their first transition to power (1996-2001 ), very strongly restricting the rights and freedoms of women. Secondary schools for girls have been closed and they ordered that they wear the full veil.
Excluded from most public jobs, women are also prevented from traveling alone outside their city. At the start of the week, the Taliban also announced that they were no longer allowed to attend Kabul parks and gardens. According to activists, the growing restrictions imposed on women aim to prevent them from gathering to organize the opposition to the Taliban regime.
Small groups of women still organized several lightning demonstrations in Kabul and in other major cities, at the risk of attracting the wrath of Taliban officials. These rallies are generally dispersed with brutality and arrested participants. At the beginning of the month, the United Nations expressed their “concern” after the Taliban disrupted a press conference organized in the capital by an organization of women. The participants were submitted to body excavations and the event organizer as well as several other people were arrested.