The Taliban government in power in Afghanistan will ban beauty salons for women across the country, which they have been given a month to close.
“The ministry has sent a letter to the municipalities to cancel beauty salons,” dated July 23, Mohammad Sadiuk Akig Mahajir, a spokesman for the ministry for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice, told the Spanish news agency EFE on Tuesday.
In the same message sent across the country, the Taliban government warns that beauty centers for women must cease operations during July and that “after the deadline, these premises become illegal.”
This measure was taken on the orders of the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzad.
The ban, which joins a list of restrictions placed on Afghan women since the Taliban took power in August 2021, also affects one of the few business opportunities in the country.
“Thousands of families headed by women will lose income. It’s really hard for us to survive. It’s kind of torture for us (women),” a makeup artist from a beauty center in Kabul told EFE.
Since Islamic fundamentalists came to power, women have been denied their rights and subjected to restrictions such as gender segregation in public places, wearing the Islamic hijab, or the obligation to travel with male family members.
Since December of last year, the list that infringes on the rights of women included a ban on working in non-governmental organizations or attending universities, an order that followed a ban on women from receiving secondary education.
The reality of women in Afghanistan is increasingly reminiscent of the first Taliban regime, which remained in power from 1996 to 2001 and is based on a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.
The Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice operated until 2001, was liquidated after twenty years of international military intervention, and returned to the new fundamentalist government after the withdrawal of NATO forces, including Portugal. , led by the US.