Afghan Taliban order women’s beauty parlours to shut

AFP | Kabul    

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have ordered beauty parlours across the country to shut within a month, the vice ministry confirmed yesterday, the latest curb to squeeze women out of public life.

The order will force the closure of thousands of businesses run by women, often the only source of income for households -- and outlaw one of the few remaining opportunities for them to socialise away from home.

“I think it would have been good if women did not exist at all in this society,” said the manager of a Kabul parlour who asked not to be identified. “I am saying this now: I wish I did not exist. I wish we were not born in Afghanistan, or were not from Afghanistan.”

Since seizing power in August 2021, the Taliban government has barred girls and women from high schools and universities, banned them from parks, funfairs, and gyms, and ordered them to cover up in public.

Women have also mostly been barred from working for the United Nations or NGOs, and thousands have been sacked from government jobs or are being paid to stay at home. Mohammad Sadeq Akif Muhajir, spokesman for the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, would not say why the order had been given.