The ruling Taliban government in Afghanistan will ban women’s beauty salons across the country, which has given a month to close.
“The ministry sent a letter to the municipalities for the cancellation of beauty salons” as of July 23, the spokesman for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Mohammad Sadiuq, told the Spanish news agency EFE on Tuesday. Akig Mahajir.
In the same letter sent to towns throughout the country, the Taliban government warns that beauty centers for women must cease all activity during the entire month of July and that, “once the deadline has passed,” the spaces will become be illegal.
The move was taken following an order from the Taliban’s Supreme Leader, Mullah Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzad.
This ban, which adds to the list of restrictions imposed on Afghan women since the Taliban came to power in August 2021, also affects one of the few business opportunities in the country.
“Thousands of families headed by women will lose income. This is very difficult for us to survive. It is a kind of torture for us (women),” a make-up artist at a beauty center in Kabul told Efe.
Since Islamic fundamentalists seized power, women have been deprived of their rights and subject to restrictions such as gender segregation in public places, the imposition of the Islamic headscarf or the obligation to travel with male relatives.
Since last December, the list that suppresses women’s rights includes a ban on working for non-governmental organizations or attending university, an order that followed the ban on women in secondary education.
The reality for women in Afghanistan is increasingly similar to the time of the first Taliban regime, which held power from 1996 to 2001, and which is based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention against Vice was in office until 2001, having been extinguished after the international military intervention that lasted for twenty years and which returned to form part of the new fundamentalist government after the withdrawal of the security forces. NATO, including Portugal, led by the United States.
Source: TSF
